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 Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where the new case
was announced on Sunday, has already faced criticism for its
management of the infection.
The infected worker, a woman who was not named, is the first person
to contract the disease in the United States. She had close and
frequent contact during the 11-day treatment of Thomas Eric Duncan,
who died on Wednesday, health officials said.
The current Ebola outbreak is the worst outbreak on record and has
killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in West Africa's Liberia,
Sierra Leone and Guinea. Duncan, a Liberian, was exposed to Ebola in
his home country and developed the disease while visiting the United
States.
The new case prompted President Barack Obama to order federal
authorities to take additional steps to ensure the American medical
system is prepared to follow correct protocols in dealing with
Ebola, the White House said on Sunday.
There was no word yet how the health worker was infected, but the
director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
said it indicated a professional lapse that may have caused other
health workers at the hospital to be infected as well.
"We don't know what occurred in the care of the index patient, the
original patient, in Dallas, but at some point there was a breach in
protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection,"
CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told a news conference.
Hospital officials said the worker had been wearing CDC-recommended
protective gear during treatment, including gowns, gloves, masks and
shields.
"We are evaluating other potential healthcare worker exposures
because if this individual was exposed, which they were, it is
possible that other individuals were exposed," Frieden said.
Tests by the CDC confirmed the patient had been infected with Ebola.
Frieden said there was one person who may have had contact with the
infected health worker when she could transmit the disease and that
person is being monitored.
None of the 10 people who had close contact with Duncan or 38 people
who had contact with that group have shown any symptoms, state
health officials said. The infected worker was not among the 48
being monitored.
In a sign of concern over the spread of Ebola, a patient in
Massachusetts who recently returned from Liberia and was displaying
symptoms of Ebola was transferred from a medical clinic to a Boston
hospital on Sunday, the hospital said.
The patient has not been confirmed to have the virus.
Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates hospital in Braintree, where the
patient first went, was closed briefly to deal with the case but
reopened, Ben Kruskal, a physician and chief of infectious disease,
said in a statement.
In the case of Duncan, the Liberian who died in Dallas, the hospital
failed to recognize that he might have Ebola when he first went to
the emergency room and he was sent home, admitted and diagnosed two
days later when his condition was more serious.
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In an effort to stop the spread of the disease, New York's John F.
Kennedy Airport on Saturday began the screening of travelers from
the three hardest hit West African countries. The airport is the
first of five U.S. airports to start enhanced screening of
U.S.-bound travelers from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In Liberia, thousands of Liberian healthcare workers are set to
begin an indefinite strike at midnight on Monday which could
undermine the country's effort to stop the spread of the virus and
leave several hundred patients without care. The Ebola virus
causes hemorrhagic fever and is spread through direct contact with
body fluids from an infected person, who suffers severe bouts of
vomiting and diarrhea.
The Texas case is not the first outside West Africa in which a
health worker contracted the disease after contact with a patient.
In Spain, a nurse who contracted Ebola after caring for two infected
priests repatriated to Spain remained seriously ill but showed signs
of improvement. Teresa Romero, 44, is so far the only person who has
tested positive for Ebola through a transmission in the country.
EBOLA PAMPHLETS
In Dallas, there was a yellow hazardous material drum on the lawn of
the brick apartment where the Texas health worker lived and
information pamphlets about the Ebola virus were stuffed in the
doors in the surrounding blocks of the apartment.
Neighbor Cliff Lawson, 57, said he was woken at 6 a.m. by two Dallas
police officers who told him "don't panic."
"I went back to bed after that. There's nothing you can do about it.
You can't wrap your house in bubble wrap," Lawson said.
A team was decontaminating the patient's apartment and car.
The infected worker, who was taking her temperature twice a day as a
precaution, informed the hospital of a fever and was isolated
immediately upon arrival there, the hospital said.
A union for registered nurses said her case in Dallas showed that
not enough is being done to educate health workers on how to manage
patients who show signs of infection. “Handing out a piece of paper with a link to the Centers for Disease
Control, or telling nurses just to look at the CDC website – as we
have heard some hospitals are doing – is not preparedness," said
Bonnie Castillo, a registered nurse and senior official with
National Nurses United.
(Reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio, Frank McGurty in New York,
David Bailey in Minneapolis, David Morgan and Valerie Volcovici in
Washington and Sarah White in Spain; Writing by Jon Herskovitz and
Brendan O'Brien; Editing by Anna Willard, Stephen Powell, Frances
Kerry and Lisa Shumaker)
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