CDC Now Monitoring 125 People Who May Have Had Contact With Dallas Ebola Patient

[Webster]

Public Health Watch: CDC Now Monitoring 125 People Who May Have Had Contact With Dallas Ebola Patient

The number of people being monitored for Ebola symptoms in Dallas, Texas, rose dramatically today as U.S. health officials broadened their net to include 125 people who had either definite or possible contact with the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.

In an update on the situation in Dallas, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday that they are now monitoring a total of 125 people, 11 of whom had definite contact and 114 of whom who had possible contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, who died from Ebola on Oct. 8.

The additional monitoring followed confirmation that a nurse caring for Duncan became infected with the deadly virus. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control had already been tracking 48 people who may have had direct or indirect contact with Duncan before he was admitted to the hospital. None of the 125 people being monitored are showing symptoms of Ebola, WFAA reported today.

Of the 76 additional people who were added to the CDC’s monitoring list, 75 are people who worked in the hospital and cared for Duncan while he was sick, and one is someone who had contact with Nina Pham, the nurse who was diagnosed with Ebola after caring for Duncan, the New York Times reported.

Pham, 26, is currently in good condition, according to a statement from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where she is receiving treatment. She received a blood transfusion from Ebola survivor Kent Brantly, who was infected with the virus while working in Liberia and was brought back to the United States for treatment.

“I’m doing well and want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers,” Pham said in a statement released by the hospital. “I am blessed by the support of family and friends and am blessed to be cared for by the best team of doctors and nurses in the world here at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.”

CDC officials are still working to identify the inadvertent “breach of protocol” that led to the infection, which was the first human-to-human transmission of Ebola ever documented in the U.S. According to medical records obtained by the Associated Press, all nurses, doctors and other hospital employees involved in Duncan’s care wore full protective equipment — including “face shields, double gowns, protective footwear and even hazmat suits” — to prevent such exposures.

Yesterday, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said the agency would be taking a number of steps including offering more training and outreach throughout the health care system, adding that the infection of a health care worker wearing protective gear “substantially” changes the way public health officials address infection control, he said. “We have to rethink how we provide care,” he said. “Even a single infection is unacceptable.”

While none of the contacts are showing symptoms, Dr. Frieden urged the public to brace for more bad news. “We need to consider the possibility that there could be additional cases, particularly among the health care workers who cared for” Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, he said, adding: “We’re concerned that there could be other infections in the coming days.”

Thoughts?

 

[Dee]

It's good the agency is monitoring potential risks and taking precautions as opposed to just letting them wander aimlessly, at least the ones they know about. This shows just how much more advanced we are in our medical technology and prevention strategies as opposed to how chaotic it is west Africa.

EDITED:

Here's a little more insight into what happened at Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

A Liberian man who arrived by ambulance at a Dallas hospital with symptoms of Ebola sat for "several hours" in a room with other patients before being put in isolation, and the nurses who treated him wore flimsy gowns and had little protective gear, nurses alleged Tuesday as they fought back against suggestions that one of their own had erred in handling him.

The statements came as Nina Pham, a 26-year-old nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, fought off the Ebola virus after contracting it from the Liberian, Thomas Eric Duncan. The statements by the Dallas hospital nurses were read by representatives of the Oakland-based group National Nurses United.

RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, said the nonunionized Texas nurses could not identify themselves, speak to the media independently or even read their statements over the phone because they feared losing their jobs. In a conference call, questions from the media were relayed to the unknown number of nurses by National Nurses United representatives, and the responses were read back to reporters.

DeMoro said all of the nurses had direct knowledge of what had transpired in the days after Duncan arrived at the hospital on Sept. 28.

Among other things, they said that Duncan “was left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area where other patients were present.”

When a nurse supervisor demanded that he be moved into isolation, the supervisor “faced resistance from other hospital authorities,” the nurses said.

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They described a hospital with no clear guidelines in place for handling Ebola patients, where Duncan’s lab specimens were sent through the usual hospital tube system “without being specifically sealed and hand-delivered. The result is that the entire tube system, which all the lab systems are sent, was potentially contaminated,” they said.

"There was no advanced preparedness on what to do with the patient. There was no protocol; there was no system. The nurses were asked to call the infectious disease department" if they had questions, they said.

The nurses said they were essentially left to figure things out for themselves as they dealt with “copious amounts” of body fluids from Duncan while wearing gloves with no wrist tapes, gowns that did not cover their necks, and no surgical booties. Protective gear eventually arrived, but not until three days after Duncan’s admission to the hospital, they said.

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