Texas School Kids in Contact with Ebola patient 'Safety of our students, our parents
and our community our No. 1 priority' by Jerome Corsi
Texas
officials are monitoring a second patient for possible signs of Ebola, less
than 24 hours after they said one man who traveled from Liberia to the U.S. has
tested positive for the disease. The first patient also had contact with five students who
attend four different public schools, officials said.
“This is all hands on deck,” said Texas Gov. Rick Perry. “We
understand that. Everyone has their marching orders and understands the
importance of collaboration.”
Dallas School Supt. Mike Miles addressed the issue of
students being exposed. “The safety of our students, our parents and our community
is our No. 1 priority. We were informed that these five students could have
possibly been in contact with the patient at the home over the weekend and they
have been in school since then.”
He said he’s been told the students have no symptoms. “They’re
at home and are being monitored by Dallas County Health Services,” he said, He
said disinfectants work, and additional custodial staff members are being
added. “Business as usual, school will be in session.”
WFAA-TV
in Dallas reported the students are from Conrad High
School, Tasby Middle School, Hotchkiss Elementary and Dan. D. Rogers
Elementary. School officials confirmed the students had been in their classes
until just before the diagnosis.
Zachary Thompson, head of the Dallas County Health and Human
Services, told WFAA on Wednesday: “Let me be real frank to the Dallas County
residents. The fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case
that is a close associate with this particular patient. So this is real.”
He said there “should be a concern, but it’s contained to
the specific family members and close friends at this moment.”
Officials had this to say when asked why the patient was
originally turned away when he first went to seek medical help: “We are
investigating, I can’t give you specific information.”
According to the AP, authorities said the man and his family
members are included in the 12 to 18 people being monitored.
The man, in isolation at Texas
Presbyterian Hospital, traveled by air from Liberia to the U.S. According to Reuters, he told officials when he first went to the hospital,
and was turned away, that he was from West Africa.
Dr. Edward Goodman, an infectious disease specialist, said
Tuesday the patient had arrived at the hospital with “non-specific symptoms,”
was given a prescription for antibiotics and sent home. Two days later he
returned by ambulance, officials said.
Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota told
Reuters the lag is “critical.” “It is going to be very important to go back and
look at this and ask basic questions about what happened and could it have been
handled differently,” he said.
On
Tuesday, WND reported the Centers for Disease Control
confirmed a “critically ill” person in Dallas had been diagnosed with Ebola.
Officials said the first case of Ebola in the United States,
other than those brought from abroad for special treatment, was in “strict
isolation” at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Doctors refused to answer questions about whether the
patient is a U.S. citizen, saying only “he’s visiting family who live in this
country.”
“We got the result back at 1:22 p.m. CT this afternoon that
the patient has Ebola, and we want to emphasize at this point, we have no other
information any other person is affected,” said Texas Department of State
Health Services Commissioner Dr. David Lakey on Tuesday. “We are committed to
make sure Texas is safe.”
On Sept. 20, the patient arrived in the U.S. on a flight
from Liberia, CDC officials said. In a press conference Tuesday, CDC Director
Dr. Thomas Frieden said: “He began developing symptoms several days after
arriving in the United States and was hospitalized. Today we determined the
patient has Ebola.”
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are the focus of the
unprecedented outbreak, which has already taken 2,800 lives and could kill as
many as 1.4 million by the end of January, according to the CDC. WND has
reported on the danger of spreading Ebola by international air travel, because
Ebola symptoms can take up to 21 days to manifest after a person has been infected.
The patient reportedly showed no symptoms while traveling,
which, the CDC said, meant “zero risk” of infecting other passengers on the
same flight. The government agency refused to say whether the individual flew
on a commercial airplane or to identify the patient’s flight number.
“The next steps are threefold,” Frieden said. “First, the
care for the patient must be provided at the highest level possible and as
safely as possible to keep at an absolute minimum the possibility anybody else
could become infected and to maximize the chances that the patient might
recover. Second, we identify all people who may have had contact with the
patient while he could have been infectious.
“Once all the persons the patient contacted are identified,
they are monitored for 21 days after exposure to see if they develop fever. If
they develop fever, the same criteria are used to isolate them and make sure
they are cared for as well as possible so they maximize their chances of
recovery and to minimize or eliminate the chance that they might infect other
people.”
Also,
the Dallas station reported a woman who
said she is a sister of the sick man told relatives he notified officials the
first time he went to the hospital that he was visiting from Liberia.”
“Mai Wureh says her brother, Thomas Eric Duncan, went to a
Dallas emergency room on Friday, and they sent him home with antibiotics. She
says he said hospital officials asked for his Social Security number, and he
said that he didn’t have one, because he was visiting from Liberia,” the report
said.
Last week, WND
reported the Obama administration’s
unwillingness to ban air travel from the West African nations hit by the Ebola
outbreak was leaving the U.S. vulnerable to the disease.
“Until it’s clear that the outbreak has stopped, no one from
those three countries should be permitted to enter the U.S. and all visa
issuance should be suspended,” contended Mark Krikorian, executive director of
the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.
As WND
reported, the United Nations World Health
Organization has argued vigorously that cutting commercial airline service to
the affected West African nations would only intensify the severity of the
Ebola epidemic by restricting the ability of international health organizations
to send qualified health professionals and supplies to the region to help
combat the disease.
WND
also reported Dr. Lee Hieb, former president of
the Association of
American Physicians and Surgeons,
warned that quarantine and fly restriction measures should be taken to prevent
Ebola from coming to America.
“You don’t get Ebola from Europe,” she told WND. “You get
Ebola from Africa. And it’s a really simple formula: Don’t let people fly to
America if they’ve been to areas where there’s an outbreak. When there’s an
outbreak, stop air [traffic] flow.”
The
CDC has issued a traveler’s alert
for all U.S. residents “to avoid travel to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leon
because of unprecedented outbreaks of Ebola in those countries.”
In the press conference Tuesday, the CDC stressed that all
passengers traveling from West Africa would be screened prior to getting on any
airplane to make ensure they’re not showing symptoms of Ebola.
“As long as Ebola continues as an epidemic in Africa, the
reality is that people travel and, like in this case, individuals may travel
before they have any symptoms,” Frieden said. “One of the things that CDC has
done in the affected West African countries is to work with the airport
authorities so 100 percent of the individuals getting on airplanes are screened
for fever before they get on an airplane.
“If they have fever, they are pulled out of the line and not
permitted to fly. No one flies until Ebola is ruled out, so the other
passengers are safe in transit and the airlines are willing to keep flying. But
that doesn’t rule out a situation like this one where someone was exposed, but
they went flying while they were incubating the disease, and were not yet
showing symptoms.”
The CDC said existing procedures for air travel are safe,
and there is no current plan to terminate or curtail air travel from West
Africa. Anyone concerned about possible exposure should call 800-CDC-INFO for
more information.
Source:http://www.wnd.com/2014/10/2nd-texas-patient-monitored-for-ebola/
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