The epicenter of the Ebola virus crisis in the United States is in Dallas and that fact has many North Texas communities, including Paris, on edge.
Federal health officials have been called to testify before a Congressional committee in Washington D.C. today on the Ebola crisis and Dallas County Commissioners are meeting this afternoon to consider issuing an official disaster declaration for the county.
Yesterday, after learning that the second health care worker, Amber Vinson, had taken a commercial flight with a fever, with the approval from the CDC, she was moved from Texas Presbyterian Health to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. This is the same hospital that two US aid workers who had been in West Africa and contracted the virus were successfully treated.
The nurse arrived in Atlanta by special aircraft Wednesday night. She walked with assistance from the plane and to a waiting ambulance while wearing protective clothing.
The CDC also asked the 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Oct. 13 from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth to call the CDC at 1-800-CDC INFO (1-800-232-4636).
Officials are now reportedly considering putting dozens of hospital workers who treated the Ebola patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on the no-fly list. The hospital has offered isolation rooms for the workers who treated Duncan, but there is no court order quarantine or isolation as of yet.
The Frontier aircraft has been taken out of service to be cleaned and a Central Texas school district has temporarily closed three of its campuses because two of its students traveled on the same flight as Vinson.
Nina Pham, the first nurse who contracted Ebola in Dallas, is expected to be moved to a National Institutes of Health isolation unit in Bethesda, Maryland, later today.
National Nurses United said that several nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian complained of confusion in the days after an Ebola patient was diagnosed there, putting nurses at risk, and that there was little training. The nurses union said that protocols to protect workers were not in place at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
To prevent this from happening again, the CDC says it will send in “SWAT” teams to hospitals where future cases are discovered.
President Barack Obama said just yesterday his administration will respond to new Ebola cases “in a much more aggressive way.”
House Speaker John Boehner said the United States should consider a travel ban “along with any other appropriate actions as doubts about the security of our air travel systems grow.” As of today travel bans are not in place for incoming US flights, although several other countries have stopped flights from Ebola infected West African countries. Five airports in the US — Kennedy International, Washington Dulles International, O’Hare International, Hartsfield-Jackson International and Newark Liberty International have begun increased “screenings” but only for those traveling from West Africa.