FORT WORTH, Texas — The nation’s top disease-fighting agency acknowledged Tuesday that federal health experts failed to do all they should have done to prevent Ebola from spreading from a Liberian man who died last week in Texas to the nurse who treated him.
The stark admission from the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came as the World Health Organization projected the pace of infections accelerating in West Africa — to as many as 10,000 new cases a week within two months.
Agency Director Tom Frieden outlined a series of steps designed to stop the spread of the disease in the U.S., including increased training for health care workers and changes at the Texas hospital where the virus was diagnosed.
A total of 76 people at the hospital might have had exposure to Thomas Eric Duncan, and all of them are being monitored for fever and other symptoms daily, Frieden said. In addition, health officials have been monitoring 48 others who had some contact with Duncan before he was admitted to the hospital.
The announcement of the government’s intensified effort came after top health officials repeatedly assured the public during the past two weeks that they were doing everything possible to control the outbreak by deploying infectious-disease specialists to the hospital where Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola and later died.
“I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the patient — the first patient — was diagnosed. That might have prevented this infection,” Frieden said.
Frieden described the new response team as having some of the world’s leading experts in how to care for Ebola and protect health care workers. They planned to review everything from how the isolation room is laid out to what protective equipment health workers use to waste management and decontamination.
In Europe, the WHO said the death rate in the outbreak has risen to 70 percent as it has killed nearly 4,500 people, most of them in West Africa.
President Barack Obama, speaking at the end of a meeting with U.S. and allied military leaders, declared that “the world is not doing enough” to fight Ebola.
Nina Pham became the first person to contract the disease on U.S. soil as she cared for Duncan. Pham released a statement through Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital saying she is “doing well,” and the hospital listed her in good condition.
