The official spearheading the U.S. response to Ebola announced Tuesday that expert teams will respond to any new cases within hours, a reaction to “loud and clear” complaints from health care workers who do not know how to treat the deadly virus.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevent, said he wished they had such a team in place when Thomas Eric Duncan tested positive at a Dallas hospital days after arriving from Liberia. He died last week, and a 26-year-old nurse who treated him has tested positive for Ebola, marking the first time the virus was transmitted within the U.S.
A quick-response team “might have prevented this infection,” Dr. Frieden told reporters.
Dr. Frieden is trying to balance the urgent response to Ebola with public reassurance. The virus has ravaged parts of West Africa and killed more than 4,000, but Americans are not used to treating it.
“Caring for Ebola can be done safely, but it’s hard,” Dr. Frieden said.
He said a single infection of any health care worker is “unacceptable,” and encouraged workers to come forward with any symptoms. That’s because a false alarm is far preferable to lag time in which an infected person exposes others to infection.
He said the good news is that dozens of people who came into contact with Duncan are two-thirds of the way through the incubation period for Ebola and have not shown any symptoms.
Even so, U.S. officials are ramping up webinars and other training to make sure every hospital in the country is able to diagnose and care for an Ebola patient, while avoiding the spared of infection to its workers.
Nina Pham, the nurse who treated Duncan, is in stable condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
“I am thinking of her constantly and hoping for her steady recovery,” Dr. Frieden said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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