A Dallas County Sheriff’s Deputy who was exhibiting signs of Ebola has been taken into isolation at a Dallas area hospital.
The deputy began to show signs of illness Wednesday morning and went to an urgent care center in Frisco, Texas. The patient said while he didn’t have direct contact with the now-deceased Thomas Eric Duncan, he was in the apartment and had contact with the family and possessions of the “Ebola patient zero.”
The patient has been identified as Sgt. Michael Monnig. He had been monitoring his temperature for the last week as a precaution and went to seek medical help when he had a fever, stomach pain and fatigue.
“We don’t want to cause a panic,” Logan Monnig told The Dallas Morning News. “There is almost no chance my dad would have Ebola. He spent very little time in the apartment, and he did not come in contact with Mr. Duncan or any bodily fluids.”
Doctors say Monnig is a “low risk” Ebola case and that it’s unlikely he or anyone else could have been infected from his visit to the urgent care center.
A United Nations medical official who tested positive for Ebola has arrived in Leipzig, Germany for isolation and treatment.
The medic is the second member of the U.N.’s medical team to contract the virus. The first member of the team infected died on September 25th.
“The man will be treated on an isolation ward… with strict security measures,” Dr Iris Minde, head of Leipzig’s St Georg clinic wrote in a press statement. “There is no danger of infection for other patients, relatives, visitors or the public.”
The clinic says their staff is fully trained in dealing with highly infectious diseases.
Meanwhile, two doctors who treated a Spanish nursing assistant who contracted Ebola from a priest who had been transported to Spain after his infection are under observation as a precaution. Neither the doctors nor the husband of the infected woman are showing signs of Ebola but remain quarantined.
Teresa Romero was diagnosed with Ebola on Monday and is the first person to catch the disease outside of Africa. Two other nurses who attended to the priest are in isolation and observation.
The death toll from the Ebola outbreak is closing in on 3,900.
The Liberian man who fell ill with Ebola while in the Dallas area is dead.
Thomas Eric Duncan died Wednesday morning at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. He had been in critical condition for days and rumors had been rampant for days that Duncan was on the verge of death.
Duncan’s family is still in isolation and is being monitored by health officials for any Ebola symptoms. Several others who had close contact with Duncan have been taken to a secret secured location. The Centers for Disease Control says no one has shown signs of Ebola.
The family confirmed that they had received confirmation of Duncan’s death.
CNN is reporting that airports within the United States are now going to take temperatures of passengers arriving from countries with Ebola infections.
The director of the CDC says that new travel guidelines are being developed for Americans.
The head of the Centers for Disease Control has admitted to reporters for the first time the possibility that Ebola could become an airborne virus.
Dr. Tom Frieden, however, sought to downplay the possibility.
“The rate of change [with Ebola] is slower than most viruses, and most viruses don’t change how they spread,” he said. “That is not to say it’s impossible that it could change [to become airborne.] That would be the worst-case scenario. We would know that by looking at … what is happening in Africa. That is why we have scientists from the CDC on the ground tracking that.”
Frieden pointed to evidence that there is very little proof of a human virus ever mutating to the point it transmits in an entirely different way.
“We have so many problems with Ebola, let’s not make another one that, of course, is theoretically possible but is pretty way down on the list of likely issues,” infectious diseases expert William Schaffner told Scientific American.
For the first time, someone has been infected with Ebola outside the African continent.
A Spanish nurse who treated a missionary and priest returned from West Africa after contracting the virus has been confirmed to have the same strain of Ebola as the priest.
“We are working in coordination to give the best care to the patient and to guarantee the safety of all citizens,” Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato told reporters on Monday. The nurse, whose name was not released, is reportedly in stable condition.
The woman’s husband and two others have been placed in isolation and at least two dozen others who had close contact with the woman are under observation by health officials. The hospital where she worked is also examining any other health care workers that had contact with the priest.
Worldwide, at least 370 health care workers have been infected with the disease while treating patients connected to this outbreak.
Journalist Ashoka Mukpo, the fifth American known to have the virus, has arrived in Nebraska and is receiving treatment. Mukpo said that he believes he was infected when he was splashed while spray-washing a vehicle where someone had died from Ebola.
The Dallas area infected patient, Eric Duncan, is in critical condition.
A cameraman working for NBC News has tested positive for Ebola while on assignment with the network’s medical reporter.
NBC Chief Medical Editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman had a team of three others working with her in Liberia when the cameraman fell ill with a fever. He self-isolated himself until he could be tested for the virus by Doctors Without Borders who confirmed the infection.
He is being flown to the United States for treatment.
Ashoka Mukpo was the second cameraman for Snyderman and had begun working for the network on Tuesday. He had been working in Liberia and posted on his Facebook page about the situation in Liberia.
“Man oh man i have seen some bad things in the last two weeks of my life,” he wrote. “How unpredictable and fraught with danger life can be. How in some parts of the world, basic levels of help and assistance that we take for granted completely don’t exist for many people. The raw coldness of deprivation and the potential for true darkness that exists in the human experience. I hope that humanity can figure out how we can take care of each other and our world.”
Dr. Snyderman says the amount of virus in Mukpo is low and that he should have a good diagnosis.
The man who brought Ebola into the United States could be facing prosecution in Liberia because he apparently lied on exit forms.
Thomas Eric Duncan told the Liberian Airport Authority “no” when he was asked if he has cared for anyone who had Ebola or touched the body of someone who had died from Ebola. Duncan had multiple contacts with a pregnant woman who died of the killer virus.
“The fact that he knew [he was exposed to Ebola] and he left the country is unpardonable, quite frankly,” Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told reporters. “I just hope that nobody else gets infected.”
“With the U.S. doing so much to help us fight Ebola, and again one of our compatriots didn’t take due care, and so, he’s gone there and … put some Americans in a state of fear, and put them at some risk,” she continued. “I feel very saddened by that and very angry with him, to tell you the truth.”
Duncan was not symptomatic when he came to the United States and fell ill days after he arrived in Texas.
The CDC has released a statement saying that Duncan was not symptomatic during his flights to the United States and that passengers on the flight were not at risk for Ebola. However, the airlines are reportedly contacting anyone who was on the flights for their own precautions.
Concerns about the health care system in Dallas is coming into question following reports that the confirmed Ebola patient was sent home initially from the hospital and was seen throwing up outside all over a common area of the apartment complex where he had been staying.
“His whole family was screaming. He got outside and he was throwing up all over the place,” resident Mesud Osmanovic, 21, said on Wednesday to Reuters.
The man, who has been identified by a family friend as Thomas Eric Duncan, reportedly helped transport a pregnant woman who suffered from Ebola to a hospital in Liberia before boarding a flight to the United States. The woman was turned away from the hospital due to lack of space and Duncan transported her back to the family home where she died.
Texas health officials initially said 18 people had contact with the man but now reports say as many as 80 are under observation because of possible contact.
Hospital officials admitted when the man first came into a hospital on Thursday and was then sent home with antibiotics he had told a nurse that he had traveled to West Africa.
“Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full teams. As a result, the full import of that information wasn’t factored into the full decision making,” Texas hospital official Mark Lester said.
The head of the U.N.’s Ebola response says that unless it’s brought under control quickly, the risk is growing likely the virus will mutate and become airborne.
Anthony Banbury said it would be a “nightmare” scenario if the virus were to mutate within new hosts to become airborne.
“The longer it moves around in human hosts in the virulent melting pot that is West Africa, the more chances increase that it could mutate,” Banbury told the London Daily Mail. “It is a nightmare scenario, and unlikely [now], but it can’t be ruled out.”
Banbury also said it was the worst situation he’s ever seen.
“In a career working in these kinds of situations, wars, natural disasters – I have never seen anything as serious or dangerous or high risk as this one.”
The fears of the UN head come as Texas officials admit at least 80 people have been taken into quarantine because of contact with the confirmed Ebola patient in a Dallas area hospital.
The situation the President described as “unlikely” and officials at the CDC doubted would happen has come true.
The first American case of Ebola has been confirmed.
“We received in our laboratory today specimens from the individual, tested them and they tested positive for Ebola,” Dr. Tom Frieden of the CDC said. “The State of Texas also operates a laboratory that found the same results.”
The Centers for Disease Control has confirmed that a Liberian man who came to the United States to visit relatives tested positive for the virus. He arrived in the U.S. on September 20th but did not show symptoms until four days later. He went to a hospital on Friday and was admitted on Sunday.
Dr. Frieden said that he is certain there will be no major outbreak.
“It does not spread from someone who doesn’t have fever and other symptoms,” Frieden outlined. “So, it’s only someone who is sick with Ebola who can spread the disease. I have no doubt that we will control or contain this case of Ebola so it does not spread throughout the country.”
