Ebola news 10/5

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola in US: People scared, but outbreak unlikely
Associated Press
By CONNIE CASS  7 hours ago



Officials from the Obama administration urged calm over the single case of Ebola in the United States as the military said Friday it had begun the long-awaited aid to disease-ravaged Liberia. (Oct. 3)



WASHINGTON (AP) — Ebola has arrived in the United States and people are frightened.

The nation's top infectious diseases expert said it's perfectly normal to feel anxious about a disease that kills so fast and is ravaging parts of West Africa.

"People who are scared, I say, we don't take lightly your fear. We respect it. We understand it," Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health said Sunday.

But West Africa, because of the weaknesses in its health system, is not the United States, Fauci said, predicting "we won't have an outbreak." Scientists know how to stop the virus from spreading.

That's not to say the first Ebola case diagnosed within the United States — a traveler from Liberia who began feeling the effects after arriving in Dallas — will be the only one.

The government took measures this past week to ensure hospitals are ready.

Despite some initial missteps in Dallas, tried-and-true methods are underway: tracking everyone who came into contact with the infected man and isolating anyone who shows symptoms.

What to know about Ebola in America:

___

THERE'S GOING TO BE A LOT OF TALK



A hazardous-materials crew arrived Friday at a Texas apartment where the U.S. Ebola patient stayed to collect bed sheets and towels used by the infected man before he was hospitalized. (Oct. 3)


Expect to hear news reports in the coming days about people who are being cared for as potential Ebola cases. That doesn't mean they have the disease.

Doctors and hospitals are isolating individuals they believe could be at risk. That's based on a combination of their symptoms and recent travel from a country where Ebola is present.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has consulted with hospitals about more than 100 potentially suspicious cases in recent months. More than a dozen were worrisome enough to merit Ebola blood tests. Only the Dallas patient had Ebola.

___

HOW IT SPREADS

Ebola doesn't spread easily like the flu, a cold or measles.

The virus isn't airborne. Instead, it's in a sick person's bodily fluids, such as blood, vomit, urine, semen or saliva. Another person can catch the disease by getting those germs into his own body, perhaps by wiping his eyes or through a cut in the skin.

Bodily fluids aren't contagious until the infected person begins to feel sick. The initial symptoms are easily confused with other illnesses, however: fever, headaches, flu-like body aches and abdominal pain. Vomiting, diarrhea and sometimes bleeding follow as the disease progresses, increasing the risk to others.

In West Africa, the disease has spread quickly to family members who tended the sick or handled their bodies after death, and infected doctors and nurses working under punishing conditions, without proper equipment. Bed sheets or clothing contaminated by bodily fluids also spread the disease.



In this photo provided by CBS News, the National Institute of Health's Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, speaks on CBS's "Face the Nation" in Washington. Speaking on the Ebola virus, Fauci said it's perfectly normal to feel anxious about a disease that kills so fast and is ravaging parts of West Africa, but predicts there won't be an outbreak in the U.S. (AP Photo/CBS News, Chris Usher)


___

CAN YOU CATCH IT ON A BUS OR PLANE?

It's very unlikely.

To be on the safe side, the CDC defines "contact" with the disease as spending a prolonged period of time within 3 feet of someone ill with Ebola, a distance designed to protect health workers from projectile vomiting.

But health officials haven't seen real world cases of the virus spread by casual contact in public, such as sitting next to someone on a bus, said Dr. Tom Frieden, the CDC director.

"All of our experience with Ebola in Africa the last four decades indicates direct contact is how it spreads," he said, "and only direct contact with someone who is ill with Ebola."

Passengers who flew on the same plane as the Dallas patient, five days before he developed symptoms, are not considered at risk by the CDC. Nor are the schoolmates of children who came in contact with the infected Dallas man, but showed no symptoms of illness while in class.

As a precaution in case they become sick and therefore contagious, the children who were in contact with the infected man were pulled from school and are being monitored for symptoms.

Initially, about 100 people were assessed for potential exposure. Health officials said Friday that 50 were still being monitored, with 10 considered at the most risk during the disease's 21-day incubation period. Four family members who shared their apartment with the patient are under quarantine.



A hazardous material cleaner removes a blue barrel from the apartment in Dallas, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas stayed last week. The family living there has been confined under armed guard while being monitored by health officials. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


Outside those circles, the odds of getting infected within the U.S. remain minuscule, health authorities say.

___

WHAT HEALTH OFFICIALS ARE DOING

The CDC is overseeing multiple layers of response:

—The Ebola-hit African nations are checking people at airports for fever, and asking them about any contact with an infected person, before allowing them to board planes out of the country.

—Airlines are required by law to watch for sick travelers and to alert authorities before landing.

—The CDC is warning doctors and hospitals to remember the possibility of Ebola and rapidly isolate and test sick patients with a risk of exposure to the virus, primarily those who have traveled recently from the hot spots.

"We all want to get to zero risk to the U.S. ... We can only do that by making sure that we get it under control in Africa. And we're beginning to see the response ramping up there. But it's going to be a long, hard fight," Frieden said Sunday.

The U.S. and other countries have stepped up aid to West African nations struggling with the disease. But the outbreak is out of control.



A sign points to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas, is being treated Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014, in Dallas. Duncan remains in isolation, where he was listed in critical condition Saturday. At the end of the week, Texas health officials said they had narrowed to about 50 the group of people they were monitoring who had some exposure to Duncan. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


"We have never seen an Ebola epidemic before in the world," Frieden said.

___

CAN LOCAL HOSPITALS HANDLE THIS?

Before the Dallas case, four Americans diagnosed with Ebola in Africa returned to the U.S. enclosed in portable biohazard units, attended by health care workers protected by what looked like puffy space suits. The patients were treated in special isolation units.

The U.S. has only four of those isolation units; when people feel sick, they go to their nearest health care.

The CDC says any American hospital should be able to care for an Ebola patient.

Emergency room staff, potentially the first line, are used to safeguarding themselves from germs. They routinely treat patients with HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases.

The CDC says it's fine to put a suspected Ebola case into a regular private room with its own bathroom, and doctors and nurses need only wear certain gowns, masks and eye protection to be safe, not the elaborate biohazard suits.

Yet the system isn't perfect, as the Dallas case shows.



A young person looks out the window of an apartment in Dallas, Friday, Oct. 3, 2014, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas stayed last week. The family living there has been confined under armed guard while being monitored by health officials. (AP Photo/LM Otero)


When the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, first arrived at a Dallas hospital, he told a nurse that he had recently traveled from West Africa, yet the possibility of Ebola was overlooked and he was discharged into the community. He returned in worse shape, by ambulance, two days later and was diagnosed with the virus. He is in critical condition.

___

THIS EBOLA OUTBREAK IS DIFFERENT, ISN'T IT?

Yes. It's the worse Ebola outbreak in history, and still out of control in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Previous outbreaks in other parts of Africa have been halted more quickly.

Lack of experience with the disease in West Africa contributed to its spread this time. Other factors: a shortage of medical personnel and supplies, widespread poverty, and political instability in affected countries.

Also, the disease is crossing national borders and spreading in urban areas. Past outbreaks tended to be in relatively isolated spots.

It's hard for Americans to grasp how much more easily diseases can spread in some of the poorest places on earth versus in the U.S., said Ebola expert Thomas Geisbert of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston.

In countries where inadequate health systems have been overwhelmed by the virus, people are dying in their homes, outside clinics that are too overfilled to take them, and sometimes in the streets. Health workers have been attacked by panicked residents.

Yet the measures that have stopped past outbreaks still work, with sufficient knowledge and resources.

Senegal appears to have stopped the disease at one case this year. Nigeria had eight deaths but brought its outbreak under control by tracking 894 people who had been in contact with a man who brought the virus from Liberia, and visiting 18,500 more people to check for symptoms, the CDC said.

U.S. officials are confident they can stay on top of any more cases that arrive.

This is the first case of Ebola recorded in the United States. But some of its relatives have been here — a case of Marburg virus, considered just as deadly, and four cases of Lassa fever in the past decade.

"There is some history of people coming back with these exotic, highly lethal diseases where it's been relatively well controlled," Geisbert said. "Hopefully that continues."
___

AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.
___

Online:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-us-people-scared-outbreak-unlikely-114158073.html

[Buster's Uncle]

What we know about the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US
Vox
Updated by Sarah Kliff and Julia Belluz on October 5, 2014, 1:57 p.m. ET



Members of the Cleaning Guys Haz Mat clean up company sanitizing the apartment where Ebola patient Thomas Duncan was staying before being admitted to a hospital in Dallas, Texas.  Joe Raedle/Getty Images



The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first-ever case of Ebola diagnosed in America.

The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, came from Liberia and is currently in isolation at a hospital in Dallas, Texas. The CDC is currently tracing all of his contacts in an attempt to isolate the disease.

As of October 5, there have been no other cases of Ebola diagnosed in the United States — although there have been about a dozen false alarms. Here's what we know and don't know about Ebola in the US.


The first person in the US diagnosed with Ebola

— The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, left Liberia on a commercial flight on September 19. He was screened for a fever on departure, and didn't have one, which means he wasn't infectious. He flew through Belgium and DC, and arrived in Dallas on September 20.

— Days before his trip, Duncan probably contracted the virus from his landlord's daughter, when he helped bring the girl to the hospital. She later died from Ebola.

— Duncan came to the United States to visit his girlfriend and family.

— Around September 24, he started to feel ill, which means he would have been infectious. The CDC and the hospital reported that he sought care at  Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on September 26.


Initial missteps by health officials

— He was first diagnosed with a "low grade, common viral infection" and sent home with an antibiotic.

— The patient's sister said that Duncan told a nurse that he had come from Liberia. This vital information "was not fully communicated throughout the full team," said Mark C. Lester, executive vice president of the health-care system that includes Texas Health Presbyterian. Ebola was not suspected.

— By September 28, Duncan had fallen gravely ill. He was sent to Texas Presbyterian in an ambulance. He was running a high fever and vomiting.

— This time, hospital staff suspected Ebola and the patient was placed in an isolation unit. On September 30, the CDC confirmed that he has Ebola. He remains in intensive care and isolation at the hospital, where his condition has worsened from serious to critical and he is "fighting for his life," according to the CDC director Tom Frieden.


How the CDC is trying to prevent Ebola from spreading

— The CDC says it has identified the people who have come into contact with the patient while he could have been infectious. Officials said about 40 people are now being followed daily to see if they develop symptoms, and about ten are at a high risk.

— These people will be followed for 21 days, their temperatures checked twice each day.

— The high-risk individuals include health professionals who cared for Duncan, and the girlfriend and family Duncan was staying with in Dallas.

— The four people who shared an apartment with Duncan (his girlfriend and three others) have been under a strict quarantine and moved to a home in the Dallas suburbs, after it took officials four days to start cleaning their potentially Ebola-contaminated apartment in which they were initially quarantined.

— So far no one the CDC is tracking has fallen ill.

— America does not intend to close its borders to visitors from Ebola-stricken West African countries. For more on why, see here.


Ebola hasn't spread in the US

— The CDC has tested about 15 other individuals in the US for Ebola this year and all have tested negative so far, except for Duncan. Since the announcement of the Dallas patient, however, fear and awareness are heightened and the CDC reported that, while they received 50 calls or e-mails prior to Duncan's case, that number has risen to 800 calls or e-mails per day.

— There have been other Americans who have come down with Ebola in Africa and returned to the US for treatment. Most recently, Nebraska Medical Center announced it will care for Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance NBC cameraman who got Ebola in Liberia. All have survived so far.


Ebola is a bigger problem in Africa than the United States

— This Ebola outbreak is by far the largest on record, killing more people and spreading to more countries than all previous Ebola outbreaks combined. The virus has made it to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria and Senegal (a separate outbreak has also occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

— On Friday, the WHO announced Ebola has killed more than 3,400 people this year and there have been more than 7,400 cases.

— Ebola is a difficult virus to transmit   and is only transferred through direct contact with bodily fluids, such as vomit, sweat and blood. It cannot go airborne which makes it usually containable by sophisticated health care systems.

— The Ebola outbreaks are concentrated in low-income countries with incredibly weak health care infrastructures. The United States has a health care infrastructure that would likely prevent the large, Ebola epidemic that has ravaged West Africa.

— There is currently no Ebola cure, although doctors have tried different treatments during this outbreak that have varying levels of research behind them.


How to learn more

— 16 things you need to know about Ebola.

— The man who discovered Ebola explains why this outbreak spiraled out of control.

— Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden says the outbreak will get worse before it gets better.

— This explains exactly how you can — and can't — get Ebola.

— Most public health experts think it would be very difficult for an Ebola outbreak to happen in the United States because of our strong health infrastructure.


http://www.vox.com/2014/9/30/6875365/ebola-in-the-us

[Buster's Uncle]

Ebola and the electronic health record gap
CNBC
By Dan Mangan and Meg Tirrell  October 4, 2014 12:49 PM



Adam Jeffery | CNBC



Initial reports that a Dallas hospital's electronic medical record system failed to flag a man who turned out to be infected with the Ebola virus underscores how clunky, outdated and inefficient health information systems typically are in the U.S., a medical IT CEO charged Friday.

"The worst supply chain in our society is the health information supply chain," said Jonathan Bush, head of Athenahealth (ATHN). "It's just a wonderfully poignant example, reminder of how disconnected our health-care system is."

"It's just a very Stone-Age sector, because it's very conservative," Bush said. "Hospital health care is still in the era of pre-Internet software."

The infected man, Thomas Eric Duncan, first went to the hospital Sept. 25 with flu-like symptoms but was released that same day. Just days later, he returned to the hospital, where he eventually tested positive for the Ebola virus.

On Thursday, the hospital released a statement that essentially pointed a finger at a flaw in its electronic records system, but the hospital has since recanted that statement, saying "the patient's travel history was documented and available to the full care team in the electronic health record (EHR), including within the physician's workflow."

Even so, medical IT experts say many hospital systems need to be improved.

In an interview with CNBC conducted prior to the hospital's reversal, Bush cautioned that he is not blaming either Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, nor its electronic health software vendor Epic Systems, for the breakdown in communication. 

Instead, he said, there is a problem among U.S. medical providers overall of relying on electronic health record systems that tend to be customized for individual providers, and not networked together nationally so that they can be updated in response to situations like the current Ebola epidemic in parts of West Africa.

"The hyperbole should not be directed at Epic or those guys at Health Texas," Bush said. "The hyperbole has to be directed at the fact that health care is islands of information trying to separately manage a massively complex network."

"People trying to recreate their own micro-Internet inside their own little biosphere . . . that'll never, never, never be excellent," Bush said. "There's no 'network effect' in health care today."

"I hope soon that nobody will be on enterprise software and these things will be managed by people across thousands of hospitals."

Duncan was only diagnosed with the Ebola virus this past Monday during his second visit to Texas Health Presbyterian-becoming the first person to be diagnosed with the deadly virus on U.S. soil.

Before then, for four days, he had been increasingly ill at an apartment in Dallas, where he was staying with relatives. He is now listed in serious condition at the hospital. Officials on Friday said 50 people who had contact with him are being monitored daily to see if they develop symptoms.

The hospital Thursday night said when Duncan was first examined Sept. 25 by a nurse, he was asked a series of questions, including whether he had traveled outside of the U.S. in the prior month.

"He said that he had been in Africa," the hospital said in a statement. "The nurse entered that information in the nursing portion of the electronic medical record."

But it turns out that answer-which could have alerted doctors of the possibility Duncan had Ebola-was not relayed electronically to them because of "a flaw" in the way doctors' workflow portions of the electronic health records interacts with the nursing portions of the EHR, the hospital initially said, but later recanted without further clarification.

"In our electronic health records, there are separate physician and nursing workflows," the hospital said Thursday. "The documentation of the travel history was located in the nursing workflow portion of the EHR, and was designed to provide a high reliability nursing process to allow for the administration of influenza vaccine under a physician-delegated standing order. As designed, the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician's standard workflow."

The hospital said it has fixed that flaw to both make travel history part of both workflows and to specifically reference regions of West Africa where Ebola has spread.

"We have made this change to increase the visibility and documentation of the travel question in order to alert all providers," Texas Health said. " We feel that this change will improve the early identification of patients who may be at risk for communicable diseases, including Ebola."

Bush noted that typically when problems like the flaw in Texas Health's EHR system are fixed, "they're fixed only at the place where they appeared."

"Those mistakes are happening constantly," Bush said.

But, "philosophically I think hospitals should get out of the business of trying to program computer systems, and expand in the business of treating patients. But that's a standard thing that goes wrong with millions of configurations" of EHRs, he said.


http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-electronic-health-record-gap-224022057.html

[Buster's Uncle]

African immigrants worry about backlash from U.S. Ebola case
Reuters
By Jon Herskovitz  15 hours ago



DALLAS (Reuters) - In Dallas and other cities home to large populations of African immigrants, worries are abounding among many that their standing in the United States has been tainted by one Liberian man infected with Ebola being treated in Texas.

"Some people around here see us as bringing the disease and that's just not right," said a Liberian who asked to be called Sekou, fearful that he and other West African immigrants are going to face bias in their U.S. home because of the sick man.

Because many Americans have little knowledge of Africa's geography and the politics of countries on the continent, some African immigrants said they have felt a backlash because of the infection in Dallas from Americans who cannot distinguish Liberia in the west from Libya in the north.

Many immigrants in Texas are also quick to offer to the United States and its people for taking them in, but say handshakes are fewer and curious glances more frequent after the Ebola discovery in Dallas.

The Dallas case, the first diagnosed case of Ebola in the United States, has put authorities and the public on alert over concerns that the worst epidemic of Ebola on record could spread from West Africa, where it began in March.

The World Health Organization on Friday updated its death toll to at least 3,439 out of 7,492 suspected, probable and confirmed cases. The epidemic has hit hardest in impoverished Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Some U.S. politicians have called on President Barack Obama to consider a travel ban from the Ebola-hit countries.

"We have one diagnosed case and now there is a list of people who want to shut the borders to Africa," said Eric Williams, running as an independent for a U.S. Congress seat from a south Dallas district.

Williams was speaking near the apartment where the Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, was carted off by an ambulance about a week ago in the melting-pot neighborhood of Vickery Meadow, home to about 25,000 people who speak more than 30 languages.

Somali immigrants wearing traditional clothing that includes headscarves for women, have seen fingers pointed their way on the neighborhood streets.

"People are looking at us in a bad way. We didn't have anything to do with this. Somalia does not have Ebola. It is on the other side of Africa," said Shadiya Abdi, 27, an immigrant from Somalia.


'GET YOURSELF QUARANTINED'

There were nearly 2 million people in the United States who came from sub-Saharan Africa, according to U.S. Census data from 2010.

In downtown Dallas, near where tourists gather at the site of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, an Ethiopian parking lot attendant who gave his name only as Ayob said a few people have started to see him as an object of suspicion.

"Some guy told me 'go get yourself quarantined'," he said.

At schools in Vickery Park, where five students who came in close contact with Duncan have temporarily stopped attending school, some of the other children of African immigrants have been branded 'Ebola kids'," politician Williams said.

At a Dallas specialty food store for African goods, customers said shutting borders is useless, especially in West Africa, where many do not know where the lines are drawn and it is easy to walk from one country to the next.

A few see a silver lining in Ebola landing in the United States, in that it will focus the attention of the world's richest country on eliminating a disease that has killed thousands in some of the world's poorest countries.

"The best thing is to mobilize resources to contain the epidemic in West Africa," said Limerick Willie, a Liberian native who is has lived in Texas for decades and now heads Dallas African Charities.

"If you stop it there, the world will be safe."


http://news.yahoo.com/african-immigrants-worry-backlash-u-ebola-case-112456547.html

[Buster's Uncle]

CDC official: 'We know how to stop Ebola'
Authorities around the country are investigating reports of Ebola-like symptoms among patients. But so far, there is just one confirmed case of the disease in the US, and the head of the CDC says, "We can stop it in its tracks."
Christian Science Monitor
By Brad Knickerbocker  11 hours ago



As concern mounts over Ebola, US officials in charge of dealing with the infectious disease have one basic message meant to address public fears:

"The bottom line here is we know how to stop it,” says Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Dr. Frieden explained his confidence: “It's not going to spread widely in the US, for two basic reasons. We can do infection control in hospitals, and we can do public health interventions that can stop it in its tracks. We do that by identifying every possible contact, monitoring them for 21 days and if they get any symptoms, isolating and monitoring them as well."

Anthony Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health, echoes that message.

“Because of our healthcare system and our ability to do the contact tracing and isolation we won’t have an outbreak,” Dr. Fauci said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“West Africa is not the United States,” he said. “Unfortunately, those people there, because of the weaknesses of their health system, are having an outbreak. It could be we see another case, but we won’t have an outbreak.”

So far, there has been just one confirmed case of Ebola in the United States: Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas, who arrived in the US from Liberia Sept. 20. Mr. Duncan is now in critical condition, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas said on Saturday. He had previously been described as being in serious condition.

Those who had been in direct contact with Duncan have been quarantined for monitoring and – if necessary – treatment.

At a press conference Saturday, CDC Director Frieden said the agency had received "well over 100 inquiries of possible patients.”

“We’ve assessed every one of those with local health departments and hospitals, and just this one patient has tested positive," he said. "We expect that we will see more rumors, or concerns, or possibilities of cases. Until there is a positive laboratory test, that is what they are – rumors and concerns.”

Initial handling of the Duncan case in Dallas was flawed, officials concede.

After feeling ill and going to the hospital, Duncan was allowed to return to the apartment where he lived with relatives. Then after he returned to the hospital with symptoms that were diagnosed as Ebola, people and infected materials were isolated in the apartment for more than a week before the space could be cleared and disinfected.

“It’s a teachable moment, as we say,” Dr. Frieden said at a press conference last week.

On Saturday, two passengers – a man traveling with his daughter – were removed from a United Airlines flight from Brussels when it arrived in Newark, NJ. The man, who had begun his travel in West Africa, became ill on the flight, exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms.

Medical authorities later reported that the man did not have the disease.

“After an examination by physicians at University Hospital, the symptoms of one individual were found to be consistent with another, minor treatable condition unrelated to Ebola,” said Tiffany Smith, a spokeswoman for Newark’s University Hospital, where the man was tested.

Meanwhile, a Massachusetts doctor and missionary who was successfully treated for Ebola he contracted in Africa is back in the hospital with what appears to be a respiratory infection, but doctors don't suspect a recurrence of the virus, the AP reports.

UMass Memorial Medical Center said in a statement that Dr. Richard Sacra was hospitalized Saturday for observation and is in stable condition.

Sacra will remain in isolation until doctors have confirmation from tests by the CDC that he is not infected with the virus, the hospital said. Doctors expect to know with certainty by late Monday.

"We are isolating Dr. Sacra to be cautious pending final confirmation of his illness," said Dr. Robert Finberg, who is heading Sacra's medical team. "We think it is highly unlikely that he has Ebola."

He spent much of the last two decades in Liberia, working with a missionary group. He also works at Family Health Center of Worcester in Massachusetts.


http://news.yahoo.com/cdc-official-know-stop-ebola-155430731.html

[Buster's Uncle]

U.S. CDC fields scores of possible Ebola case inquiries, no new infections
Reuters
10 hours ago



DALLAS (Reuters) - (This October 4 story corrects first paragraph to say that the 100 inquiries were since July, not since the first positive diagnosis in the U.S.)

U.S. health officials have fielded inquiries about as many as 100 potential cases of Ebola since July, but the only diagnosis made in the United States remains that of the man diagnosed late last month in Dallas, a senior health official said on Saturday.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said news of the Ebola patient in Dallas had alerted hospitals nationwide to check incoming patients for potential risks, particularly those who had recently traveled from the center of the outbreak in West Africa.

The CDC has identified nine people who have had contact with the Dallas patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, and therefore may have been exposed to the virus, and an additional 40 are being monitored as potential contacts. None have shown symptoms, Frieden said.

The first Ebola diagnosis in the United States "has really increased attention to what health workers need to do to be alert and make sure a travel history is taken," Frieden told a news conference.

Frieden added that many of the inquiries involved people who had not traveled from West Africa, but that the agency preferred healthcare workers to cast as wide a net as possible.

Duncan, now being treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, was sent home after his first visit to the emergency room, despite telling a nurse there that he had just been to Liberia.

The governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are struggling to contain the worst outbreak on record of the deadly hemorrhagic fever.

The World Health Organization on Friday updated its death toll to at least 3,439 out of 7,492 suspected, probable or confirmed cases.

On Friday, officials said the number of people placed under isolation in Dallas after possible exposure to Duncan had grown to at least 10, including four members of a family moved to an undisclosed house for close monitoring.

Initially, 100 people had been feared to have had direct or indirect contact. All those in isolation were cooperating with public health authorities by staying in quarantine voluntarily, according to Dallas city and county officials.

"There's no one under orders. There's no one that we perceive that needs to be under orders," Judge Clay Jenkins, Dallas County's top elected official, told a news conference late on Friday.

Separately, five public school children who had possibly been exposed to the Ebola patient had been kept home from class in recent days while being monitored as a precaution, though none had shown any symptoms, said Mike Miles, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District.

Authorities did not identify the individuals placed in isolation but said they included the four members of a single family whose apartment Duncan was staying in when he fell ill after traveling to Dallas from Liberia on Sept. 19.

(Reporting by Sharon Begley in Atlanta, Michele Gershberg in New York, and John Herskovitz and Lisa Maria Garza in Dallas; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Kevin Liffey)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-cdc-fields-scores-possible-ebola-case-inquiries-165100804.html