US Ebola Patient Identified, May Have Exposed School-Aged Children to Disease - East Idaho News
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US Ebola Patient Identified, May Have Exposed School-Aged Children to Disease

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93014 TexasHealthPresbyterian?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1412199160073Will Montgomery(DALLAS) — Five school-aged children in Texas may have been exposed to Ebola by the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States, officials said Wednesday.

The children had contact with the patient and are being monitored at home, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Wednesday in a press conference.

“Let me assure you, these children have been identified and are being monitored,” the governor said.

“This is all hands on deck,” Perry said.

The patient was identified on Wednesday as Thomas Eric Duncan. Duncan’s identity was confirmed Wednesday by a source familiar with the government’s response to the diagnosis. His name emerged as Texas health officials outlined efforts to track and monitor people Duncan had been in contact with since becoming sick over the weekend.

The country’s top medical official, who has vowed to stop Ebola “in its tracks” in the U.S., conceded Wednesday that it’s “not impossible” that others will contract the disease.

Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said an extensive tracking process is underway in the wake of the first Ebola diagnosis in the United States, with special focus on the Duncan’s family and health staff.

“We have a seven-person team in Dallas working with the local health department and the hospital, and we will be identifying everyone who may have come in contact with him and then monitoring them for 21 days,” Frieden said.

The city of Dallas, which has activated its Emergency Operations Center on “Level 2: High Readiness,” said, “We are currently evaluating 12-18 people that the patient confirmed to have the Ebola virus was in contact with.”

In addition, the three ambulance crew members that brought Duncan to the hospital were tested for Ebola. The tests were negative, but the crew members were sent home and will be monitored for the next three weeks, the city said in a statement.

Duncan’s safety, along with the well-being of the medical people treating him, is a primary focus, Frieden said.

“What we need to do first in this particular instance is do everything possible to help this individual who’s really fighting for their life, and then make sure that we’re doing that, that we don’t have other people exposed in the hospital, identify all those contacts and monitor them for 21 days. It’s not impossible that one or two of them would develop symptoms and then they would need to be isolated,” he said.

Frieden said he’s confident that passengers who flew on the same plane as Duncan did not contract the disease.

“That was four or five days before he had his first symptoms and with Ebola, you’re not contagious until you have symptoms,” he said.

Jan Eyckmans, spokesperson for the Belgian health ministry, confirmed that Duncan had flown through Brussels on his way from Liberia to the United States, but said echoed Frieden, noting that because Duncan had shown no symptoms, he was not yet contaigious, and no screening was necessary for other passengers on that flight.

“Besides the case detected yesterday,” the Texas State Health Department told ABC News, “there are no additional suspect cases in Texas at this time and we have not conducted any more Ebola tests in our state lab.”

Although American Ebola patients have been treated in the United States prior to this diagnosis, they all contracted Ebola in West Africa. Ebola has killed 2,917 people and infected 3,346 others since the outbreak began in March.


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