It is being reported that health officials are monitoring a second person who may be infected with the deadly Ebola virus who had close contact with the first person to be diagnosed in the U.S.
All who have been in close contact with the man diagnosed are being monitored as a precaution, Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County Health and Human Services, said in a morning interview with WFAA-TV.
“Let me be real frank to the Dallas County residents: The fact that we have one confirmed case, there may be another case that is a close associate with this particular patient,” he said. “So this is real. There should be a concern, but it’s contained to the specific family members and close friends at this moment.”
The director continued to assure residents that the public isn’t at risk because health officials have the virus contained.
However, children are being kept home from school in the Dallas area and Texas Governor Rick Perry says a handful of school-aged children who had contact with a man diagnosed with Ebola are being monitored.
Perry says health officials learned Wednesday that the children have been identified as having contact with the man and are being monitored at home. The unidentified man has been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas since Sunday.
Authorities say the ambulance crew who transported the man and members of his family are among the 12 to 18 people being monitored after exposure to the man. The man’s sister says he told officials the first time he went to the hospital that he was visiting from Liberia.
Thomas Eric Duncan, went to a Dallas emergency room on Friday and was sent him away with antibiotics. He returned two days later to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and was admitted.
Dr. Mark Lester confirmed Wednesday that a nurse asked Duncan on his first visit whether he had been in an area affected by the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in West Africa but that the “information was not fully communicated throughout the whole team.”
A former Food and Drug Administration chief scientist and top infectious disease specialist said Dr. Jesse L. Goodman, now a professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center, said while the nation shouldn’t panic, it’s best to prepare for the worst.
There is increasing concern in America’s medical community that preparedness for a pandemic has stagnated or slipped in recent years because of tough economic times and increasing malaise since the 2001 anthrax threat.
Earlier this year, the CDC sounded less optimistic about the U.S. health care system’s ability to fight a pandemic should a major disease outbreak occur.
“CDC continues to work with reduced financial resources, which similarly affects state, local, and insular public health departments. … These losses make it difficult for state and local health departments to continue to expand their preparedness capabilities, instead forcing them to focus on maintaining their current capabilities,” the CDC warned in a report this year.
CDC flagged several key trend lines, including congressional funding for public health emergency preparedness had shrunk by $1 billion from its highs shortly after the 2001 terrorist and anthrax attacks.
It also noted that state and local public health departments on the front lines of any health emergency have shed 45,700 jobs since the 2008 financial crisis.
Progressive agendas have encouraged deficit spending on social programs that do little to combat poverty but rather discourage work, creativity and innovation. This in turn decreases our ability as a nation to prepare for such events.