Nurse with Ebola 'doing well' in isolation as Dallas hospital monitors others

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is establishing an Ebola response team that will be immediately dispatched to any hospital with a confirmed case of the disease.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, CDC director Tom Frieden conceded that the agency should have sent a larger team to Dallas when Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who contracted the disease before arriving in the US, tested positive for Ebola two weeks ago. Duncan died in hospital last Wednesday.

“That might have prevented this infection,” Frieden said. “Ebola is unfamiliar. It’s scary and getting it right is really important because the stakes are so high,” he added.

Frieden said investigators have still not identified the apparent breach in protocol that led to Nina Pham, a nurse who cared for Duncan, contracting the virus. Healthcare workers wore gowns, gloves, masks and face shields when treating Duncan.

Regardless, Frieden said enhanced safety measures are already being implemented in Dallas, including the addition of a round-the-clock site manager to help enforce infection control procedures. Two nurses from Emory University hospital in Atlanta, home to one of the nation’s four bio-containment units, were sent to Dallas where they will train hospital staff.

The CDC is also recommending that hospitals limit the number of staff involved in an Ebola’s patients care. Pham, 26, was one of 76 healthcare workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who may have come into contact with Duncan or his blood while he was being treated. Pham entered Duncan’s intensive care unit often, and cared for Duncan a day before he died last week, according to medical records.

Members of the medical team that treated Duncan were instructed to self-monitor for 21 days, the disease’s incubation period. Pham was admitted to hospital and placed in isolation on Saturday after reporting a slight fever, the hospital said. The following day, the CDC confirmed that she had tested positive for Ebola.

Pham, who has received blood plasma from an American, Dr Kent Brantley, who recovered from Ebola earlier this year, said she is “doing well” in a statement released by the hospital on Tuesday.

“I’m doing well and want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers,” Pham said. “I am blessed by the support of family and friends and am blessed to be cared for by the best team of doctors and nurses in the world here at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.”

A man who had contact with Pham before she became symptomatic is being “actively monitored” by health officials, as is her dog, Texas health commissioner David Lakey said on Tuesday.

The 48 people who are believed to have had varying degrees of contact with Duncan are all still being monitored for symptoms. Frieden said they’ve passed the riskiest period of their 21-day incubation, and an infection at this point would be “unusual”.

The deepening Ebola crisis in west Africa has claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people.