In Dallas Ebola Case, Officials Are Monitoring Children Exposed to Patient
DALLAS
— Health officials in Dallas are monitoring at least five
schoolchildren in North Texas who came into contact with a man found to
have Ebola virus, after he became sick and infectious.
The
authorities also said that an early opportunity to put the patient in
isolation, limiting the risk of contagion, may have been missed because
of a failure to pass along critical information about his travel
history.
The
patient was identified by Liberian health officials and The Associated
Press as Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national. Mr. Duncan came to the
United States on Sept. 20 aboard a commercial airliner and officials
said that he had shown no symptoms of the disease while on the flight
and that he had posed no threat to other passengers.
Mr.
Duncan worked at a shipping company in Monrovia, Liberia, but had just
quit his job, giving his resignation in early September, his boss said.
He had gotten a visa to the United States and had decided to go, his
neighbors said. He lived alone, but has family in the United States,
they said.
Graphic
Retracing the Steps of the Dallas Ebola Patient
Health officials are tracking down people who may have
been in contact with the man in Dallas who has been diagnosed with
Ebola.
Mr.
Duncan may have become infected after his landlord’s daughter fell
gravely ill. On Sept 15, Mr. Duncan helped his landlord and his
landlord’s son carry the stricken woman to the hospital, his neighbors
and the woman’s parents said. She died the next day.
Soon,
the landlord’s son also became ill, and he died on Wednesday in an
ambulance on the way to the hospital. Two other residents in the
neighborhood who may have had contact with the woman have also died.
Their bodies were collected on Wednesday as well.
Health
officials in Dallas said Wednesday that they believed Mr. Duncan came
in contact with at least 12 to 18 people when he was experiencing
symptoms. So far, none has been confirmed infected.
The
five children, who possibly had contact with Mr. Duncan at a home over
the weekend, attended four different schools, which authorities said
would remain open. As a precaution, they said all the schools —
including one high school, one middle school, and two elementary schools
— would undergo a thorough cleaning.
“This case is serious,” Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said at a news conference. “This is all hands on deck.”
Health
officials on Wednesday continued to track down other people who might
have been exposed to Mr. Duncan after he began showing symptoms, on
Sept. 24, and will monitor them every day for 21 days — the full
incubation period of the disease. Most people develop symptoms within
eight to 10 days. As a patient becomes sicker and the virus replicates
in the body, the likelihood of the disease spreading grows.
Even
as public officials sought to reassure the public that the situation
was under control, there were questions about how the patient was
treated when he first went to a hospital on Sept. 26.
Dr.
Mark Lester, executive vice president of the Texas Health Resources
System, said the hospital staff had been instructed to ask patients
about their travel history, following the advice of federal authorities.
That
checklist, he said, was utilized by a nurse and the patient volunteered
that he had just come from Liberia. “Regretfully that information was
not fully communicated” to the full medical team, Dr. Lester said.
As
a result, that information was not used in the clinical diagnosis and
Mr. Duncan was sent home, with the diagnostic team believing he simply
had a low-grade fever from a viral infection. He was rushed to the
hospital in an ambulance two days later, his condition having
significantly deteriorated. He remains in isolation at Texas Health
Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas in serious condition.
In
the time between Mr. Duncan’s trips to the hospital, health officials
said he came into contact with more people while he was symptomatic and
infectious. The contacts possibly included the five children who saw him
over the weekend before going to school on Monday.
Other
people who came into contact with him include relatives and the medical
technicians who took him by ambulance to the hospital. At least three
Dallas Fire and Rescue emergency medical technicians were being
monitored and were in isolation at home, according to officials.
Graphic: What You Need to Know About the Ebola Outbreak
Even the emergency vehicle that was used — Ambulance No. 37 — is in isolation and not in service.
The
five children who had contact with Mr. Duncan are being kept home from
school, according to David Daigle, a spokesman for the federal Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention team that is working with local
health officials to trace the contacts. Adults without symptoms do not
have to stay home or be quarantined, but will be visited once a day for
21 days by health teams to have their temperatures taken and be checked
for signs of illness. The first round of visits to contacts took place
on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Daigle said.
Mr.
Duncan, who was visiting relatives in the United States, was not ill
during the flight to America, health officials said at a news conference
Tuesday. Indeed, he was screened before he boarded the flight and had
no fever.
Because
Ebola is not contagious until symptoms develop, there is “zero chance”
that the patient infected anyone else on the flight, Dr. Thomas R.
Frieden, the director of the federal disease centers, said. Ebola is
spread only by direct contact with body fluids from someone who is ill.
Since
the outbreak in West Africa, there have been more than 100 reports to
the disease centers from local health departments concerned that a
patient might have been exposed to the virus, according to officials.
Roughly 14 of those cases led to blood tests to determine if the virus
was present. The man in Dallas is the first one whose test came back
positive.
The
Dallas-Fort Worth region is among the state’s most ethnically and
racially diverse. There are an estimated 10,000 Liberians living in the
four-county area known as North Texas that includes Dallas County. One
active community group, the Liberian Community Association of
Dallas-Fort Worth, was founded more than 30 years ago. It appeared that
Mr. Duncan had been staying with relatives who lived near the hospital
in the Fair Oaks section of Dallas.
“The
C.D.C. is on the ground, and we are going individual by individual that
he had contact with, making sure they are in the appropriate
isolation,” said Mayor Michael S. Rawlings of Dallas. “There is very
little risk at this point for folks that just live in the general area.”
Still,
many in the community were skeptical of the assurances of public health
officials, especially as they hear ever more dire reports from
relatives and friends back in Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment