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First Ebola Case in USA: Can It Be Spread?

By Glynn Cosker
Editor, In Homeland Security

In spite of the CDC confirming the first diagnosis of the Ebola virus in the U.S. Tuesday, health care experts are reassuring the public that Ebola cannot be spread if a patient has no symptoms. The CDC states that there is no need to panic because one must come in contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids in order to contract Ebola.

“I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country,” said CDC Director Tom Freiden. That’s good news because, as with any deadly virus on American soil, citizens have the word ‘epidemic’ in the back of the minds.

However, the bottom line is unless you have touched the blood, vomit, saliva, sweat, urine or feces of a person with Ebola, you don’t have the disease. It’s that simple. Ebola is a volatile, deadly virus that kills around half of the people it infects, sometimes from uncontrollable bleeding out of numerous orifices. So, the patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, and his movements since arriving in the U.S., gives rise to concern.

Here is what is officially known about the unidentified patient:

  • The patient traveled from Liberia in West Africa on Sept. 19 and arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit friends and family.
  • The patient had no contact with any of the Ebola response operational teams in Liberia.
  • The patient displayed no symptoms upon leaving Africa or on the plane that carried him to the U.S.
  • At some point around Sept. 24, the patient began to feel unwell and two days later he or she went to a local health care facility.
  • Surprisingly, and some might say—shockingly—the patient was sent home. Apparently, no travel history was taken and Ebola was not mentioned as a possibility.
  • Two days after that first trip to see a doctor, on Sept. 28, the patient was admitted to the hospital as a possible Ebola case and placed in isolation pending test results.
  • On Sept. 30, the CDC confirmed an Ebola virus diagnosis.

There are some unknown elements as well. For example, the nationality of the patient is unknown; we don’t know if he or she traveled on a commercial flight to the U.S.; we don’t know the symptoms the patient is currently displaying at the hospital; and—more importantly—we don’t know the daily activities of the patient upon his arrival in the U.S. That last point is particularly alarming in that a health care provider sent the person away—four days before the CDC confirmed the presence of Ebola.

For now, there is no need to panic. However, let’s hope that doctors or nurses ask the important question of anybody showing Ebola-like symptoms: Have you recently traveled? That’s just plain common sense.

 

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