CDC: First Ebola patient confirmed in US
Sep 30, 2014, 9:01 PM | Updated: 10:46 pm
PHOENIX — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first-ever documented case of Ebola in the United States.
The patient was in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which had announced a day earlier that the person’s symptoms and recent travel indicated a possible case of Ebola, the virus that has killed more than 3,000 people across West Africa and infected a handful of Americans who have traveled to that region.
The person, an adult who was not publicly identified, developed symptoms days after returning to Texas from Liberia and showed no symptoms on the plane, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said the patient came to the U.S. to visit family and has been hospitalized since the weekend.
State health officials said no other cases are suspected in Texas.
Specimens from the patient were tested by a state lab and confirmed by a separate test by the Centers for Disease Control, said Carrie Williams, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services.
Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health & Human Services, said health officials in North Texas are well equipped to care for the patient.
“This is not Africa,” he told Dallas station WFAA. “We have a great infrastructure to deal with an outbreak.”
The CDC has said 12 other people in the U.S. have been tested for Ebola since July 27. Those tests came back negative.
Four American aid workers who have become infected while volunteering in West Africa have been treated in special isolation facilities in hospitals in Atlanta and Nebraska, and a U.S. doctor exposed to the virus in Sierra Leone is under observation in a similar facility at the National Institutes of Health.
The U.S. has only four such isolation units but the CDC has insisted that any hospital can safely care for someone with Ebola.
According to the CDC, Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus.
Jason McDonald, spokesman for the CDC, said health officials use two primary guidelines when deciding whether to test a person for the virus.
“The first and foremost determinant is have they traveled to the region (of West Africa),” he said. The second is whether there’s been proximity to family, friends or others who’ve been exposed, he said.
U.S. health officials have been preparing since summer in case an individual traveler arrived here unknowingly infected, telling hospitals what infection-control steps to take to prevent the virus from spreading in health facilities. People boarding planes in the outbreak zone are checked for fever, but symptoms can begin up to 21 days after exposure.
A large Ebola outbreak in western Africa has killed at least 1,830 people in Liberia and 2,400 overall. Estimates said more than 1.4 million people could be infected by January. Despite the virus’ current prevalence, it is not airborne. Ebola spreads through contact with blood and other bodily fluids of an infected person or some animals.
The virus has up to a 90 percent fatality rate and has no approved vaccine or cure, but that latter fact may soon change.