CONFIRMED: Ebola In America as Officials Hide Victim’s Identity
African News, Ebola News, Featured, Latest Headlines, News Tuesday, September 30th, 2014
United States health officials have announced that a patient being treated at a Dallas hospital is the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the country.
Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas Frieden, who confirmed the diagnose on Tuesday, said the unidentified man left Liberia on September 19 and arrived in the United States on September 20.
Director of US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Thomas Frieden
At that time, the individual did not have symptoms. “But four or five days later,” he began to exhibit them, Frieden said. The individual was hospitalized and isolated Sunday at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Citing privacy concerns, health officials declined to release any details about how the patient contracted the virus, what he was doing in Liberia or how he was being treated.
“I can say he is ill. He is under intensive care,” Dr. Edward Goodman of the hospital told reporters.
The patient is believed to have had a handful of contacts with people after showing symptoms of the virus, and before being isolated, Frieden said. A CDC team isTexas to help investigate those contacts.
Crew members who transported the patient to the hospital have been isolated, the chief of staff for Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings told CNN. None have shown symptoms of the disease so far.
At the same time, Frieden sought to play down the risk to public health. There are currently no other suspected cases of Ebola in Texas.
“One of the things that CDC has done in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Lagos, is to work with the airports’ authority so 100% of the individuals getting on planes are screened for fever,” the director said. “And if they have a fever, they are pulled out of the line, assessed for Ebola and don’t fly unless Ebola is ruled out.”
He added, however: “As long as there continue to be cases in West Africa, the reality is that patients travel, individuals travel, and, as appears to have happened in this case, individuals may travel before they have any symptoms.”
Frieden declined to answer whether the patient is a U.S. citizen, saying just that he was in Texas to visit family.
He also declined to say, clearly, whether the patient is a man, although he referred to the person as “he” on multiple occasions.
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