Health officials have so far identified between 12 and 18 people that the U.S. Ebola patient may have come in contact with while contagious, an official said at a press conference Wednesday.
Five students at four different schools have come into contact with the Ebola patient, Dallas Superintendent Mike Miles added, but none has exhibited symptoms. The children are being monitored at home, and the schools remain open, Miles said.
Concern about the possible spread of the killer virus comes less than a day after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that, for the first time, a person with Ebola was diagnosed on American soil.
How that case was handled has sparked many serious questions.
The patient, a man, walked into an emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on September 26. A nurse asked him for his travel history while he was in the emergency room, and the patient said he had traveled to Africa, said Dr. Mark Lester, executive vice president of Texas Health Resources.
But that information was not "fully communicated" to the medical team, Lester said.
The man, who had just flown from Liberia to the United States, underwent basic blood tests, but not an Ebola screening, and was sent home with antibiotics, said Dr. Edward Goodman with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Two days later, on September 28, the man returned to the facility, where it was determined that he probably had Ebola. He was then isolated. He tested positive for the virus Tuesday, health officials said.
The CDC, which has helped lead the international response to Ebola, advises that all medical facilities should ask patients with symptoms consistent with Ebola for their travel history.
It's possible that others were infected because of the lapse. People who have Ebola are contagious -- but only through contact with infected bodily fluids -- when they display active symptoms of the virus, such as a high fever, severe headache, diarrhea and vomiting, among others. It's not like a cold or the flu, which can be spread before symptoms show up, and it doesn't spread through the air.
That the man had recently arrived in the United States from Liberia should have been a huge red flag, if he was asked about his travels.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/01/health/ebola-us/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
) but to another country where they don't have the resources to quarantine and support them. Ebola is just a horrible disease for anyone to have, period.
Necrotizing fasciitis ("flesh-eating bacteria") is the truly scary stuff, because it actually can form from very common bacteria. It could be living on your skin right now, but because it got under your skin a certain way, all of a sudden you're in danger of losing your limbs to infection, and doctors are cutting off chunks of your flesh because it's traveling too quickly for them to do anything else.
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