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 Health officials in Dallas charged with checking the spread of Ebola
have narrowed their focus to about 50 people who had direct or
indirect contact with an infected Liberian visitor, including 10 at
high risk who are being checked twice daily for symptoms.
In Washington, officials were asked at a news conference why the
visitor, Thomas Eric Duncan, was able to get past screening in his
journey from Liberia on Sept. 19 and then be sent home after telling
a Dallas hospital a few days later about his travel to a country
where there had been an Ebola outbreak.
“There were things that did not go the way they should have in
Dallas, but there were a lot of things that went right and are going
right," Dr. Anthony Fauci, a director at the National Institutes of
Health, told reporters at the White House.
“So, although certainly it was rocky" in terms of how people
perceived the response, "the reason I said there wouldn’t be an
outbreak is because of what is going on right now," Fauci said.
Fauci said although it "may be entirely conceivable" that there
would be another Ebola case in the United States, the strength of
the healthcare infrastructure "would make it extraordinarily
unlikely that we would have an outbreak.”
The case 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.
At Friday's news conference, White House adviser Lisa Monaco was
asked whether she would recommend to President Barack Obama that he
impose a travel ban on West Africa, as some public officials have
called for.
"Right now we believe those types of steps actually impede the
response," Monaco said.
U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, a Republican from Tennessee, urged
Obama to order U.S. airports to screen travelers coming from
Ebola-hit countries.
As part of the U.S. effort to help contain the spread of Ebola, the
Pentagon on Friday said the number of military personnel that could
be deployed to West Africa could reach nearly 4,000, more than
earlier estimates of about 3,000.
DECONTAMINATING APARTMENT
A cleanup crew was decontaminating the Dallas apartment where Duncan
had been staying before he was admitted to the hospital five days
ago. Four people close to Duncan who were quarantined in the
apartment in a northeastern section of the city have been moved to
an undisclosed location, said Sana Syed, the public information
officer for the City of Dallas.
The handling of the Dallas case in the early stages of Duncan's
illness has raised questions about how prepared local and national
health officials were to handle that case and whether people were
unnecessarily exposed.
Out of 100 people who had direct or indirect contact with Duncan,
health officials are monitoring 50 on a daily basis and closely
watching 10 people at higher risk, said Dr. David Lakey,
commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services.
The observations include fever checks at least twice daily. Ebola,
which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through
contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.
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Sheets and other items used by the man in the apartment have been
sealed in plastic bags, but questions have been raised about the
delay in sanitizing it.
A crew from the Cleaning Guys, a hazardous materials cleanup
company, garbed in yellow hazardous material suits and masks, went
inside the apartment and packed the soiled sheets, Duncan's luggage
and other personal items into blue barrels, the county fire marshal
said. The mattress was being cut into pieces to fit into the
barrels. Another official said the cleaners would take the
containers to a secure location.
Since Duncan's diagnosis, people have visited hospitals in a few
states and were checked for Ebola symptoms. On Friday, Howard
University Hospital in Washington said it admitted and isolated a
patient with possible symptoms who had recently traveled from
Nigeria "in an abundance of caution." The CDC says outbreaks in
Nigeria and Senegal appear to have been contained.
In Congress, U.S. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal
Rogers, a Republican, and ranking Democrat Nita Lowey set an Oct. 17
deadline for the Obama administration to provide details of its plan
to deal with the outbreak, including how each agency is contributing
and monthly costs.
The critical issue of how hospitals in the United States should
handle and dispose of medical waste from Ebola patients is being
addressed, the government said. The U.S. Department of
Transportation said it expected to release new guidelines on Friday
that would allow Texas hospitals to dispose safely of Ebola-infected
medical wastes.
NBC News said on Thursday that one of its freelance cameramen,
Ashoka Mukpo, 33, had contracted Ebola in Liberia, the fifth
American to be diagnosed after being infected in West Africa. NBC
has said the entire reporting crew would return to the United States
under quarantine for 21 days, the maximum incubation period for
Ebola.
The Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha said in a statement that an
Ebola patient was scheduled to arrive for treatment on Monday
morning. Mukpo's father, Mitchell Levy, told Reuters his son was
going to Nebraska for treatment.
(Reporting by Bill Trott and Eric Beech in Washington, Julie
Steenhuysen in Chicago, Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North
Carolina, Lisa Maria Garza and Marice Richter in Dallas; Writing by
Jim Loney and Grant McCool; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn, Jonathan Oatis
and Lisa Shumaker)
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