Ebola report - 10/08/2014

Dallas Ebola patient has died, hospital confirms

The Liberian national who recently became the first man to ever be diagnosed in the United States with Ebola died early Wednesday, a Dallas, Texas hospital said.

RT,
8 October, 2014

"It is with profound sadness and heartfelt disappointment that we must inform you of the death of Thomas Eric Duncan this morning at 7:51 am," Texas Health Resources said in a statement. "Mr. Duncan succumbed to an insidious disease, Ebola.

He fought courageously in this battle. Our professionals, the doctors and nurses in th unit, as well as the entire Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas community, are also grieving his passing. We have offered the family our support and condolences at this difficult time."

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BREAKING: Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has died, hospital says

4:16 AM - 9 Oct 2014

A North Texas CBS affiliate reported earlier Wednesday that Duncan, 42, was still in critical condition more than 10 days after he was first placed in isolation at the Dallas hospital. Duncan had traveled to the US from Liberia late last month and, despite seeking medical treatment upon arrival, was not quarantined until several days later.

This year's outbreak of Ebola had claimed a total of roughly 3,439 lives as of earlier this month, according to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on October 3. A handful of Americans who contracted the disease abroad have successfully been treated before in the US, and a freelancer for NBC News is currently under the care of experts at a Nebraska hospital.

According to the World Health Organization, the fatality rate associated with Ebola averages roughly 50 percent, but has ranged from 25 to 90 percent in past outbreaks.

Duncan’s liver function declined over the weekend, TIME Magazine reported on Wednesday, and doctors were still curious to see how the man would react to an experimental drug called brincidofovir that was approved on Monday by federal regulators to treat Ebola patients in exigent circumstances.

"What we saw was very painful. It didn't look good," Duncan's nephew, Josephus Weeks, told NBC News after visiting his uncle at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Monday.

A general view of the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in seen in Dallas, Texas, October 4, 2014. (Reuters/Jim Young)

"I'm just praying my dad will make it out safely," Karsiah Duncan said at a news conference Tuesday evening. Family members who spoke to doctors that same day told Reuters journalists that Duncan was being sedated, his temperature was normal and his diarrhea had slowed.

Although no further cases of the often fatal disease have been discovered yet in the US, health officials in Texas were still monitoring 48 people on Wednesday who might have been previously exposed to the virus through Duncan.

"This is a very critical week," Dr. David Lakey, the Texas health commissioner, told the Associated Press. "We're at a very sensitive period when a contact could develop symptoms. We're monitoring with extreme vigilance."

Exercising on the side of caution, an American Airlines passenger was admitted to a hospital late Tuesday night and checked for Ebola after displaying flu-like symptoms on a flight from Dallas. Midland, Texas Public Information Officer Sarah Bustilloz told KOSA that it was"highly unlikely” the passenger had contracted the disease.

Meanwhile, civil rights activist Jesse Jackson traveled to Dallas this week to meet and pray with Duncan’s family, as well as to urge the community to ostracize them.

"I'm concerned that they feel so alienated and so pushed away,” Jackson told reporters. Indeed, members of diverse Dallas community where Duncan stayed for days with symptoms of the disease have already said they’re being blamed for a potential outbreak based off of their immigrant status alone.

Elsewhere, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy, a Democrat, declared a public health emergency roughly 1,500 miles away as a precautionary measure as Ebola fears spread outside of the Lone Star State.

“We are taking this action today to ensure that we are prepared, in advance, to deal with any identified cases in which someone has been exposed to the virus or, worst case, infected,” Malloy said in a statement.

Last month, Duncan became the first person to be diagnosed outside of Africa with Ebola. On Tuesday, however, a Spanish nurse was confirmed to have caught the disease, likely from a patient she treated recently with substandard health procedures in place.

Anxiety grows in US after death of Texas Ebola patient

Hours after Thomas Eric Duncan became first Ebola fatality in the US, official who had visited contaminated apartment shows ‘some’ symptoms

Jim Kim: 'We should have done so many things … There should have been monitoring when the first cases were reported.' Photograph: Tanya Bindra/AP

the Guardian,

18 October, 2014

The heightened sense of anxiety over the spread of Ebola to the US was amplified on Wednesday when Thomas Eric Duncan, the first man diagnosed with the disease outside Africa, died and a law enforcement official was admitted to hospital after having been in the apartment where Duncan stayed.

“The risk is minimal,” Maher Maso, the mayor of Frisco, a northern Dallas suburb, said at a hastily-called press conference about the law enforcement official, a Dallas county sheriff’s deputy, on Wednesday afternoon. He added that authorities are moving forward “with an abundance of caution”.

Frisco fire chief Mark Piland said the man had visited the apartment where Duncan stayed after he arrived in the US last week and interacted with some of the people who live there, all of whom are under quarantine and not exhibiting symptoms. He was transported by ambulance to the hospital after going to an urgent care facility with “some” Ebola-like symptoms, which can also be symptoms of other illnesses. The ambulance crew who helped the sheriff into the vehicle wore protective suits and carried out decontamination procedures.

The man was admitted to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, where hours earlier Duncan succumbed to the Ebola virus, the hospital confirmed.

“Right now, there are more questions than answers about this case,” the hospial said in a statement. The Ebola test takes about 48 hours to return results.

Based upon the “low risk” posed by the man, everyone in the urgent care waiting room was asked to monitor their health but allowed to leave.

Health officials are monitoring 48 people who may have come into contact with Duncan, only 10 of whom are considered “high risk” and under quarantine. The man admitted to the hospital on Wednesday was not one of the individuals being monitored, Piland said.

Authorities were criticised last week for the time it took to decontaminate the apartment in which Duncan was staying, and their failure to lock it down to prevent unauthorised entries and exits.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also said that this does not appear to be a case of Ebola. The deputy isn’t showing typical symptoms of the virus and never came in direct contact with Duncan.

The head of the CDC, Thomas Frieden, urged hospitals to “think Ebola”, and respond quickly to patients who display symptoms of the disease and have the relevant travel history.

Frieden said several ill people have been tested for Ebola due to the heightened awareness of the disease.

“Right now there is only one patient who’s ever been diagnosed with Ebola in the US and that individual tragically died today,” he said on Wednesday.

Frieden said he is deeply saddened over Duncan’s death, and said it was a tragic reminder of the deadliness of this disease.

“His is a fate that we associate now with Ebola,” Frieden said. “Since the start of the epidemic 3,742 patients in west Africa have been documented to have died from the disease. We don’t have their faces as prominently in front of us, and we know that even more people have been affected. But we think about this and we remember what a deadly enemy Ebola is.”

See also - Global response to Ebola has ‘failed miserably’, says World Bank chief

Ebola: Worsening Epidemic - World Report, October 6, 2014

General: If Ebola reaches Central America, ‘there will be mass migration into the U.S.’

http://theextinctionprotocol.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/general-if-ebola-reaches-central-america-there-will-be-mass-migration-into-the-u-s/
by The Extinction Protocol

October 2014 – HEALTH – Those looking for good news on the fight against Ebola will not find much encouragement from Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly, the commander of the U.S. Southern Command. As Jim Garamone of Department of Defense News reports, Kelly told an audience at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday that, if the disease reaches Central America, “it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States.” He also said with certainty that “there is no way we can keep Ebola [contained] in West Africa. By the end of the year, there’s supposed to be 1.4 million people infected with Ebola and 62 percent of them dying, according to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention]… So, much like West Africa, it will rage for a period of time,” Kelly said. This is particularly possible scenario if the disease gets to Haiti or Central America, he said. If the disease gets to countries like Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador, it will cause a panic and people will flee the region, the general said.“If it breaks out, it’s literally, ‘Katie bar the door,’ and there will be mass migration into the United States,” Kelly said. “They will run away from Ebola, or if they suspect they are infected, they will try to get to the United States for treatment.”

Kelly said that human trafficking could be an additional wrinkle in the battle to contain the disease. He related a disturbing anecdote from a recent visit to Central America where some men from Liberia were headed to the United States: Also, transnational criminal networks smuggle people and those people can be carrying Ebola, the general said. Kelly spoke of visiting the border of Costa Rica and Nicaragua with U.S. embassy personnel. At that time, a group of men “were waiting in line to pass into Nicaragua and then on their way north,” he recalled. “The embassy person walked over and asked who they were and they told him they were from Liberia and they had been on the road about a week,” Kelly continued. “They met up with the network in Trinidad and now they were on their way to the United States — illegally, of course.” Those men, he said, “could have made it to New York City and still be within the incubation period for Ebola.” Earlier this year, General Kelly gave some chilling testimony about the limitations on the United States’s ability to protect the southern border: In spring hearings before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, Kelly said that budgets cuts are “severely degrading” the military’s ability to defend southern approaches to the U.S border. Last year, he said, his task force was unable to act on nearly 75 percent of illicit trafficking events. “I simply sit and watch it go by,” he said. But the potential threats are even greater. Kelly warned that neglect has created vulnerabilities that can be exploited by terrorist groups, describing a “crime-terror convergence” already seen in Lebanese Hezbollah’s involvement in the region.

 –The Weekly Standard