Family of Dallas Ebola patient told to stay home

USA Today – by Liz Szabo

The Dallas family of a man infected with Ebola has been told to stay home and not have any visitors, to prevent the potential spread of the disease.

Health officials said they have issued the order “out of an abundance of caution,” rather than because of a high risk. No one in the patient’s family, which has identified the patient as Thomas Eric Duncan, is showing symptoms. Ebola can only be spread when someone is showing symptoms, through direct contact with bodily fluids such as blood.  

Health officials are now hoping to talk to 80 to 100 people with whom Duncan may have had contact. The patient is currently in serious condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

“People may have had contact with this individual, we need to interview them,” Zach Thompson with Dallas County Health and Human Services told WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth, on Thursday.

“Close contacts are only those individuals we need to do medical monitoring or taking their temperature. So that number is a small number. The contact number now is up to 80 people. [That] does not mean that they are showing any symptoms, but that’s the number of people that has come in contact with the patient,” Thompson said onNews 8 Daybreak.

Carrie Williams with the Texas Department of State Health Services said health officials are “working from a list of about 100 potential or possible contacts and will soon have an official contact tracing number that will be lower. Out of an abundance of caution, we’re starting with this very wide net, including people who have had even brief encounters with the patient or the patient’s home. The number will drop as we focus in on those whose contact may represent a potential risk of infection.”

The local health department had already told the family to stay home. A strict public health control order, however, is needed to make that request legally binding.

“We have tried and true protocols to protect the public and stop the spread of this disease,” said David Lakey, Texas health commissioner. “This order gives us the ability to monitor the situation in the most meticulous way.”

Officials hand delivered the orders to the family Wednesday. The orders legally require the family to stay at home and not have any visitors without approval from the local or state health department for 21 days — the incubation period for Ebola. The orders end Oct. 19. Once the incubation period ends, family members without any Ebola symptoms are no longer considered to be at risk.

The order requires the family to be available to provide blood samples and agree to any testing required by public health officials and to immediately report any symptoms to Dallas County Health and Human Services. Symptoms include fever above 100.5 degrees, headache, nausea, diarrhea or abdominal pain.

States don’t often have to use these kinds of measures.

But Texas law allows the state health department and the local health authority to issue control measures to a person who is ill with, has been exposed to or is the carrier of a communicable disease. Control measures can include isolation, quarantine and preventive therapy. If a person does not follow these orders, they can be enforced by the courts and the person can face criminal charges.

Ebola has infected 7,178 people and has killed 3,338 in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Senegal and Nigeria, the World Health Organization says. The outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal — which took swift, decisive action to control the virus — are likely over.

In other countries, however, the number of cases has been doubling every three weeks, and the CDC estimates that the disease could affect up to 1.4 million people by January if it’s not quickly controlled.

Contributing: WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/02/ebola-family-quarantined/16579953/