By DENISE GRADY
A man who took a commercial flight from Liberia that landed in Dallas on Sept. 20 has been found to have the Ebola virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday. He is the first traveler to have brought the virus to the United States on a passenger plane and the first in whom Ebola has been diagnosed outside of Africa in the current outbreak......
A man who took a commercial flight from Liberia that landed in Dallas on Sept. 20 has been found to have the Ebola virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday. He is the first traveler to have brought the virus to the United States on a passenger plane and the first in whom Ebola has been diagnosed outside of Africa in the current outbreak.
As the disease has swept across West Africa, many health experts said it would be only a matter of time before it reached the United States. Hospitals and health departments around the country have been preparing for it, and a number of false alarms have occurred. But this time, the case is real.
The man, who was visiting relatives in the United States, was not ill during the flight, health officials said at a news conference Tuesday evening. 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, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the disease centers. Ebola is spread only by direct contact with body fluids from someone who is ill.
A team from the C.D.C. is being dispatched to Dallas to help trace any contacts who may have been infected, including family members, health care workers and others with whom the patient spent time in Dallas. Health officials in Texas said they had already begun that process. Dr. Frieden said the family and community contacts were few, no more than a handful. But he said it was possible that family members who were with the man while he was ill would turn out to be infected.
Contact tracing involves identifying people who might have been exposed to the patient during the time he was infectious, and then monitoring them for symptoms every day for 21 days — the full incubation period of the disease. Most people develop symptoms within eight to 10 days of being exposed. Anyone who starts running a fever or having symptoms is then isolated and tested for Ebola. If the test is positive, that person is kept in isolation and treated, and his or her contacts are then traced for 21 days. The process is repeated until there are no new cases.
Describing these methods as “tried and true,” Dr. Frieden said, “I have no doubt that we’ll stop this in its tracks in the U.S.”
Dr. Frieden declined to disclose flight information or to say whether the patient is an American citizen. He said the man was not a health worker, and officials had no idea how he had become infected.
The man did not get sick until about Sept. 24, several days after he arrived. He is being treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and is critically ill, Dr. Frieden said. He said there was no reason to move the patient to another hospital, noting that any hospital in the United States capable of isolating patients for other infectious diseases could safely handle an Ebola case. Doctors and the patient’s family are discussing whether to try experimental treatments, Dr. Frieden said.
The hospital’s epidemiologist, Dr. Edward Goodman, said: “We have had a plan in place for some time now for a patient presenting with possible Ebola. Ironically, we had a meeting the week before of all the stakeholders who might be involved. We were well prepared to care for this patient.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/health/airline-passenger-with-ebola-is-under-treatment-in-dallas.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0
As the disease has swept across West Africa, many health experts said it would be only a matter of time before it reached the United States. Hospitals and health departments around the country have been preparing for it, and a number of false alarms have occurred. But this time, the case is real.
The man, who was visiting relatives in the United States, was not ill during the flight, health officials said at a news conference Tuesday evening. 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, said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the disease centers. Ebola is spread only by direct contact with body fluids from someone who is ill.
A team from the C.D.C. is being dispatched to Dallas to help trace any contacts who may have been infected, including family members, health care workers and others with whom the patient spent time in Dallas. Health officials in Texas said they had already begun that process. Dr. Frieden said the family and community contacts were few, no more than a handful. But he said it was possible that family members who were with the man while he was ill would turn out to be infected.
Contact tracing involves identifying people who might have been exposed to the patient during the time he was infectious, and then monitoring them for symptoms every day for 21 days — the full incubation period of the disease. Most people develop symptoms within eight to 10 days of being exposed. Anyone who starts running a fever or having symptoms is then isolated and tested for Ebola. If the test is positive, that person is kept in isolation and treated, and his or her contacts are then traced for 21 days. The process is repeated until there are no new cases.
Describing these methods as “tried and true,” Dr. Frieden said, “I have no doubt that we’ll stop this in its tracks in the U.S.”
Dr. Frieden declined to disclose flight information or to say whether the patient is an American citizen. He said the man was not a health worker, and officials had no idea how he had become infected.
The man did not get sick until about Sept. 24, several days after he arrived. He is being treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and is critically ill, Dr. Frieden said. He said there was no reason to move the patient to another hospital, noting that any hospital in the United States capable of isolating patients for other infectious diseases could safely handle an Ebola case. Doctors and the patient’s family are discussing whether to try experimental treatments, Dr. Frieden said.
The hospital’s epidemiologist, Dr. Edward Goodman, said: “We have had a plan in place for some time now for a patient presenting with possible Ebola. Ironically, we had a meeting the week before of all the stakeholders who might be involved. We were well prepared to care for this patient.”
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/health/airline-passenger-with-ebola-is-under-treatment-in-dallas.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=0