EbolaCDC: First Ebola case diagnosed outside Africa; patient being treated in Dallas, Texas
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday evening announced the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed outside Africa during the current outbreak, which has so far killed more than 3,000 people this year. The CDC said the patient left Liberia on 19 September, but did not develop symptoms until 24 September, when he was already in Dallas. He was admitted to the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas on Sunday, 27 September. The possibility of treating the patient with experimental therapies was being discussed with the patient’s family. If the Texas patient receives the experimental treatment for Ebola, he will be the fifth to do so in the United States (a sixth American – a carrier of dual American-Liberian citizenship who worked for Liberia’s Ministry of the Treasury – contracted the disease in Monrovia in July and dies a few days later in a Lagos, Nigeria hospital). The FDA has issued warning letters to three privately held companies marketing what they claim are treatments to prevent or treat Ebola.
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday evening announced the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed outside Africa during the current outbreak, which has so far killed more than 3,000 people this year.
On Monday the CDC said that its virus proliferation models, which take into account the pace and pattern of spread of the virus since the it was discovered in Guinea in March, show that unless comprehensive new interventions to stop the spread pf the virus are launched, there will be at least 1.4 million cases of Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone by 20 December 2015 – of which, at a minimum, 70 percent will die.
The model does not include Guinea because the Guinea government has been unreliable in reporting cases of infection in the country, and for its own reasons has been providing figures which scientists consider to be improbably low.
The CDC has not identified the patient, who is being treated in Dallas, Texas.
The CDC said the patient left Liberia on 19 September, but did not develop symptoms until 24 September, when he was already in Dallas. He was admitted to the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas on Sunday, 27 September.
Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, said the patient was being treated in strict isolation, and that CDC will follow “tried and true” protocols to ensure that the disease would not spread in the United States.
“I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country,” he told a news conference.
Frieden told reporters that the CDC believed it was the first case of Ebola to be diagnosed outside Africa in the current outbreak. “This is the first patient diagnosed outside of Africa to our knowledge with this particular strain of Ebola,” he said.
The only retails about the patient the CDC released were that he was not involved in the public health response to the crisis in Liberia, and was visiting family in the United States. His citizenship was not disclosed.
“The president and director Frieden discussed the stringent isolation protocols under which the patient is being treated as well as ongoing efforts to trace the patient’s contacts to mitigate the risk of additional cases,” a White House spokesman said.
