Dead liberian victim’s fiancée among those cleared; US to revise protocol, Pentagon readies rapid response team
lifting in part the Ebola gloom of the past week, the US authorities on Monday declared that 43 Texans who were put on a 21-day quarantine after coming into contact with liberian victim Thomas Eric Duncan are free of the deadly virus.
“Thankfully they are all asymptomatic, and it looks like none of them will get Ebola,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins told reporters. One more person was expected to be cleared later on Monday, while four others will complete their monitoring period over the next few days.
Among those cleared was Duncan’s fiancée, louise Troh. “We are so happy this is coming to an end, and we are so grateful that none of us has shown any sign of illness,” said Troh, who is otherwise grieving the death of Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in America within days of coming from liberia and who died later at a Dallas hospital.
This piece of good news notwithstanding, more than 70 health workers from the Texas Presbyterian Hospital continue to be in isolation and under strict watch, given that two of the hospital nurses contracted the virus and are being treated in specialized facilities in Maryland and Atlanta.
Separately, several hundred air passengers who travelled by the flights that one of the two nurses took for visiting Cleveland and returning to Dallas are being monitored.
A third medical person — a lab supervisor — whose presence on a cruise ship created a major scare and the vessel had to return to Galveston, Texas on Sunday, was not found to have symptoms of Ebola, much to the relief of the large number of travellers.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced on Sunday that it was putting together rapid response medical teams for ensuring immediate attention to outbreak of Ebola cases in the US. The 30-member specialized team will have five doctors, 20 nurses and five trainers, with the requisite protective facilities.
The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention is revising Ebola protocols to make them more foolproof. The new guidelines will insist on using protective gear “with no skin showing” for health care workers treating Ebola patients.
They will set rigorous rules for removal of equipment and disinfection of hands, with a site manager to supervise the wearing and removal of the protective gear.
The modified protocols are meant to eliminate chances of health care workers contracting the disease while treating victim and reassuring bodies such as the American Nurses Association that have demanded better equipment and clearer standards.