Photo Credit: TownHallBy Daniel Doherty.
White Press Secretary Josh Earnest answered questions today at the White House about why the president cancelled two out-of-state fundraising visits in order to meet with “cabinet agencies” about the growing Ebola threat. The president rarely if ever cancels fundraisers so the maneuver certainly raised some eyebrows in Washington.
“The president was not able to host that meeting and travel at the same time,” his spokesman said. “If the president determines it’s time to return to the White House to fulfil his responsibilities as president and commander in chief…he will alter his schedule accordingly.”
His spokesman, however, also sought to assuage concerns that a mass Ebola outbreak is imminent in the United States. He reminded the public that the chances of that happening are exceedingly slim.
“The way that Ebola is transmitted is very clear,” he said. “And is something that is not likely to happen in the United States. Ebola is not like the flu….the only way that a patient can get Ebola [is through bodily fluids].”
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Photo Credit: Handout photoSecond Texas nurse tests positive for Ebola
By EMILY SCHMALL and NOMAAN MERCHANT.
The Ebola crisis in the U.S. took another alarming turn Wednesday with word that a second Dallas nurse caught the disease from a patient and flew across the Midwest on an airliner the day before she fell ill, even though government guidelines should have kept her off the plane.
Amid growing concern, President Barack Obama canceled a campaign trip to address the outbreak and vowed that his administration would respond in a “much more aggressive way” to Ebola cases in the United States.
Though it was not clear how the nurse contracted the virus, the case represented the latest instance in which the disease that has ravaged one of the poorest corners of the earth — West Africa — also managed to find weak spots in one of the world’s most advanced medical systems.
The second nurse was identified as 29-year-old Amber Joy Vinson. Medical records provided to The Associated Press by Thomas Eric Duncan’s family showed she inserted catheters, drew blood and dealt with Duncan’s body fluids.
Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola after coming to the U.S. from Liberia, died Oct. 8.
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21 Days Not A Long Enough Quarantine For Ebola, New Study Suggests
By Jon Fortenbury.
A 21 day quarantine, after being infected with the Ebola virus, has become the standard quarantine recommendation for avoiding the spread of the virus. That’s not long enough to eliminate the risk, suggested a new study published yesterday in PLOS Currents: Outbreaks.
By looking at data from past Ebola outbreaks, as well as the first nine months of the current Ebola outbreak, Drexel University environmental engineering professor Dr. Charles Haas pointed out that between 0.1 and 12 percent of the time, the incubation period for someone infected with Ebola was longer than 21 days. The 0.1 figure comes from the 1976 Ebola outbreak in Zaire, which had far fewer cases analyzed than the other Ebola outbreaks looked at in this study that have had a higher number of cases with longer incubation periods, such as the Ebola outbreak in Congo in 1995 and the current outbreak in West Africa.
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CDC Demands 132 Passengers That Flew With 2nd Ebola Patient Report For Testing
By Tyler Durden.
But, but, but they said it wasn’t contagious unless you came into contact with bodily fluids. According to the CDC, the 2nd health-care worker infected with Ebola traveled on Frontier Flight 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas on October 13th and are asking all 132 passengers on the flight to get tested. One question… what about the thousands of people that those 132 passengers came in contact with in the last 2 days?
NEW TEXAS EBOLA PATIENT FLEW DOMESTICALLY NIGHT BEFORE FEVER APPEARED — CDC
Via Bloomberg,
Second health-care worker with Ebola traveled on Frontier flight 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas on Oct. 13, CDC says in e-mailed statement.
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Photo Credit: APMEDICAL RESEARCH ORG CIDRAP: EBOLA TRANSMITTABLE BY AIR
By CHRISS W. STREET.
The highly respected Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota just advised the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) that “there is scientific and epidemiologic evidence that Ebola virus has the potential to be transmitted via infectious aerosol particles,” including exhaled breath.
CIDRAP is warning that surgical facemasks do not prevent transmission of Ebola, and healthcare professionals (HCP) must immediately be outfitted with full-hooded protective gear and powered air-purifying respirators.
CIDRAP since 2001 has been a global leader in addressing public health preparedness regarding emerging infectious diseases and bio-security responses. CIDRAP’s opinion on Ebola virus is there are “No proven pre- or post-exposure treatment modalities;” “A high case-fatality rate;” and “Unclear modes of transmission.”
In April of 2014, CIDRAP published a commentary on Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) that confirmed the disease “could be an aerosol-transmissible disease, especially in healthcare settings,” similar to the known aerosol transmission capability of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Although CIDRAP acknowledges that they were “first skeptical that Ebola virus could be an aerosol-transmissible disease,” they are “now persuaded by a review of experimental and epidemiologic data that this might be an important feature of disease transmission, particularly in healthcare settings.”
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