Four people close to the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States were quarantined in a Dallas apartment yesterday, where sheets and other items used by the man were sealed in plastic bags, as health officials widened their search for others who had direct or indirect contact with him.
In Liberia, an American freelance TV cameraman working for NBC News in Liberia has contracted Ebola, the fifth US citizen known to be infected with the deadly virus that has killed at least 3,300 people.
The 33-year-old man, whose name was not released, will be flown back to the US for treatment, the network said .
US nurses say they are unprepared to handle Ebola patients
Immediately after beginning to feel ill and discovering he was running a slight fever, the cameraman quarantined himself. He then went to a Doctors Without Borders treatment centre and 12 hours later learned he tested positive for Ebola.
The entire NBC crew are flying back to the US on a private charter plane and will place themselves under quarantine for 21 days, the maximum incubation period for Ebola.
US health officials said they were confident they could prevent the spread of Ebola in the US after the first case was diagnosed this week on US soil. Up to 100 people had direct or indirect contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian citizen, and a handful were being monitored, said Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
None of those thought to have had contact with Duncan were showing symptoms of Ebola, Dallas County officials said at a news conference.
Duncan had helped a pregnant woman who later died of Ebola in Liberia, just days before flying to Texas via Brussels and Washington two weeks ago. Duncan had been staying in an apartment in the northeastern part of the city for about a week before going to a Dallas hospital.
In Liberia, the head of the country’s airport authority, Binyah Kesselly, said the government could prosecute Duncan for denying he had contact with someone who was eventually diagnosed with Ebola.
The government said Duncan failed to declare that he helped neighbour Marthalene Williams after she fell critically ill on September 15. Williams died.
Kesselly said Duncan was asked in a questionnaire whether he had come in contact with any Ebola victim or was showing any symptoms. “To all of these questions, Duncan answered ‘no’,” Kesselly said.
Officials have said the US healthcare system is well prepared to contain the hemorrhagic fever’s spread by careful tracking of those who have had contact with Duncan, and employing appropriate care. Dallas County officials said the problem was very localised. Duncan initially sought treatment at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on the night of September 25 but was sent back to the apartment, with antibiotics, despite telling a nurse he had just been in Liberia.
By Sunday, he needed an ambulance to return to the same hospital after vomiting on the ground outside the apartment complex.
Police and armed security guards yesterday were keeping people about 100 metres away from the apartment, with orange cones blocking the entrance and exit. Maintenance workers scrubbed the parking lot with high-pressure water and bleach.
CNN reported that a Dallas woman who had a child with Duncan said he had sweated profusely in the bed they shared at her apartment. The woman, whom CNN identified only as “Louisa”, is quarantined in the apartment with one of her children, who is 13, and two visiting nephews in their 20s.
They were all in the home when Duncan began showing signs of illness, the report said.
Meanwhile, US nurses are saying they are unprepared to handle Ebola patients. Nurses, the frontline care providers in US hospitals, are insisting they are untrained and unprepared to handle patients arriving in their hospital emergency departments infected with Ebola.
Many say they have gone to hospital managers, seeking training on how to best care for patients and protect themselves and their families from contracting the deadly disease.