A nurse who treated an Ebola-stricken Liberian man at a Dallas hospital has contracted the disease despite wearing extensive protective gear, officials said Sunday in announcing the first apparent transmission of the deadly virus in the United States.
Word of the infected American health care worker came four days after the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Wednesday at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas after battling Ebola there for more than a week.
Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the worker, who was not identified but whom others have said is a female nurse, had “extensive contacts” with Duncan on “multiple occasions.” Still, he and other authorities said it remains unclear what sort of safety breach led to the infection.
The case raises doubts about whether hospitals around the country, aside from a handful of highly specialized facilities, are prepared to safely deal with the Ebola virus, and whether front-line nurses and doctors have received adequate training in diagnosing and treating the disease.
The Dallas nurse had not been considered a “high risk” contact of Duncan’s, but rather was one of 18 employees the hospital was monitoring for potential symptoms.
The CDC is monitoring another 48 people who had contact with Duncan before he was admitted to the hospital.
“We’d known that further cases of Ebola are a possibility for those who were in close contact” with Duncan, said Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer for Texas Health Resources, which operates the Dallas hospital.
Officials said the nurse had been under “self-monitoring” at home in recent days, which includes twice-daily temperature checks. On Friday, she reported a “low-grade fever” and was referred for testing.
Varga said the nurse notified the hospital after showing symptoms, came directly there and was admitted to an isolation room. He said the entire sequence of events took less than 90 minutes.
A state laboratory delivered a preliminary Ebola diagnosis late Saturday. The CDC confirmed those results Sunday.
Local, state and federal officials rushed Sunday to calm fears among Dallas residents and people throughout the country. They said they always expected more cases could surface among people who encountered Duncan, but that quickly isolating those patients and monitoring their contacts would halt a spread of the disease.
“While this is obviously bad news, it is not news that should bring about panic,” said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins at a news conference.
Dallas officials deployed hazmat teams to decontaminate the entrance and common areas of an apartment complex where the health worker lives, as well as the vehicle the nurse used to travel to the hospital.
The nurse’s residence is under police guard, and a hazmat team was scheduled to decontaminate it later Sunday.
The city also knocked on doors and issued reverse 911 calls to homes in the area.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said officials have a plan to take care of a dog living in the worker’s apartment. It had shown no symptoms of the disease.
Hospital officials said the infected nurse was “following full CDC precautions” — including wearing a gown, gloves, a mask and a protective face shield — when she began treating Duncan upon his second visit to the hospital Sept. 28. He had been turned away days earlier.
Even for those trained in working under such circumstances, correctly putting on and taking off protective gear is time-consuming and tricky.
“It’s not easy to do right,” Frieden said. He noted that removing personal protective equipment, in particular, presents one of the biggest risks for infection. According to CDC guidelines, protective equipment must be removed in a precise order, without any of the material touching the wearer’s skin, mucus membranes or the exterior of the clothing.
