After casting a wide net to assess 100 people who may have come in contact with the man who has Ebola, federal and Texas state officials have narrowed down the number to 50 people, 10 of whom are considered high risk, including the patient’s four family members who are quarantined in their apartment.
The patient, 42-year-old Thomas Eric Duncan, remains in serious but stable condition. Among the 50 are a number of at-risk hospital workers and staff. All individuals are doing well and have reported no symptoms so far, Texas health officials reported during an afternoon news conference Oct. 3.
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String-like Ebola virus particles are shedding from an infected cell in this electron micrograph.
Late in the day on Oct. 2, CDC issued an updated advisory for health care professionals on evaluating patients for Ebola, asking them to increase their vigilance in taking travel history; to isolate patients who fit the precautionary criteria for Ebola; and to immediately notify local and state health departments.
“We’ve been redoubling out efforts to sensitize health care providers on how to correctly identify and safely deal with Ebola patients,” said Dr. Beth P. Bell, director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Meanwhile, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which initially sent Mr. Duncan home with antibiotics, released more details about that encounter.
In an Oct. 2 statement, the hospital noted that physician and nursing workflows were separate in the electronic health records, such that “the travel history would not automatically appear in the physician’s standard workflow.”
On his first visit to the emergency department, Mr. Duncan presented with a temperature of 100.1° F, abdominal pain for 2 days, a sharp headache, and decreased urination, although no symptoms were severe, the hospital reported. He reported no nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea. Mr. Duncan also said that he had not been around any sick individuals and that he had been in Africa.
The hospital said that the travel history documentation has now been relocated “to a portion of the EHR that is part of both [nursing and physician] workflows. It also has been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa.”