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Tag: infection
Second U.S. Ebola Nurse To Leave Hospital

Second U.S. Ebola Nurse To Leave Hospital

Washington — A Texas nurse who was the second U.S. healthcare worker infected with Ebola while caring for a Liberian patient will leave hospital later Tuesday, her spokesman told AFP.

Amber Vinson was declared cured of the virus last week by Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, and is expected to make a statement to reporters upon her release at 1 pm (1700 GMT).

She will not take questions, spokesman Steven Jumper said.

Her colleague Nina Pham, who also worked in the intensive care unit of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, was treated for Ebola at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland and was released on Friday.

Both became infected while caring for a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who was diagnosed with Ebola in Texas after flying to the United States from his native Liberia, the country hardest hit by West Africa’s Ebola epidemic. He died on October 8.

Ebola has killed more than 4,900 people and infected more than 10,000 since the beginning of the year, according to the World Health Organization.

Vinson’s story sparked alarm across the United States after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she flew on a domestic airplane from Texas to Ohio and back, and reported a low-grade fever before boarding the flight home.

The CDC cleared her for travel at the time — about a day before she was diagnosed with Ebola — but said later she should not have been traveling on a commercial airliner.

Vinson’s family hired a high profile Washington lawyer, Billy Martin, after issuing a statement saying they were “troubled by some of the negative public comments and media coverage that mischaracterize Amber and her actions.”

“In no way was Amber careless prior to or after her exposure to Mr. Thomas Eric Duncan. She has not and would not knowingly expose herself or anyone else,” it said.

The release of Vinson leaves just one patient in U.S. hospital care for Ebola, doctor Craig Spencer, at Bellevue Hospital in New York.

AFP Photo/Chip Somodevilla

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Obama Announces Plans For New Ebola Screening Of Airline Passengers

Obama Announces Plans For New Ebola Screening Of Airline Passengers

By Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times

The Obama administration is developing additional screening protocols for airline passengers both overseas and in the United States to control infectious diseases such as Ebola, President Barack Obama said Monday.
After meeting with his senior health, homeland security and national security advisers, Obama told reporters that in the wake of the first Ebola case diagnosed in the U.S., officials would study increasing screening plans.
“We’re also going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States,” the president said, without offering details. New measures could be announced shortly, an administration official said.
“I consider this a top national security priority,” Obama said.
He spoke after Texas officials said they were making good progress in monitoring those who had been in contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas last month. Also Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry called for more screening at the borders in the wake of the Duncan case.
At a televised news conference to announce his new 17-member task force to deal with infectious diseases, Perry said federal officials should tighten screening procedures at all U.S. points of entry. Screeners would take travelers’ temperatures and conduct other assessments to determine their overall health.
Duncan did not have a fever when he left Liberia on Sept. 19, but developed symptoms days after arriving in Dallas. He first sought medical care the night of Sept. 25 but was sent home with antibiotics. When his condition worsened on Sept. 28, he was rushed back to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where he is in isolation and in critical but stable condition.
He has been receiving an experimental treatment using the antiviral drug brincidofovir.
In Dallas, Texas Health Commissioner David Lakey told reporters of continuing efforts to monitor those who may have come in contact with Duncan or with his secondary contacts. Lakey said no symptoms have developed among those being monitored, not even among the 10 people considered to be in the high-risk group. Those at high risk include the family and friends who stayed with Duncan at a Dallas apartment when he had symptoms. The low-risk group, mainly those who encountered people in the high-risk group, has 38 people, Lakey said.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said the second phase of the apartment cleanup has been completed, including disposal of most of Duncan’s personal items, which could be infectious.
Meanwhile, a freelance journalist who had been working for NBC News arrived in Omaha, Neb., to be treated for Ebola, which he contracted in Liberia. Ashoka Mukpo was taken to the Nebraska Medical Center, where he will be kept in isolation. Mukpo, who became ill last week, is the fifth American with Ebola to return to the U.S. for treatment during the outbreak.
Mukpo was able to walk off the plane on his own Monday before being loaded onto a stretcher for the ambulance ride to the hospital, his father, Dr. Mitchell Levy, said at a televised news conference. Levy told reporters that his son wanted to help the people of Liberia because he lived there for two years while working with a nonprofit.
It was not known how Mukpo became infected, but Levy said it may have happened when his son helped clean a vehicle in which someone had died.
In Spain, officials announced that a nurse who helped care for two priests infected with Ebola has tested positive for the virus — becoming the first person known to have contracted Ebola outside West Africa. She was described as in stable condition. According to the World Health Organization, more than 3,400 people have died during the current outbreak, the worst on record.

AFP Photo/ Carl de Souza

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First U.S. Child Dies From Enterovirus D68

First U.S. Child Dies From Enterovirus D68

Washington (AFP) — A child in the northeastern U.S. state of Rhode Island has become the first to die from an ongoing outbreak of a respiratory virus, enterovirus D68, health officials said Wednesday.

The child died from an unusual combination of enterovirus D68 — which has infected more than 470 kids across the United States since August — and a staph infection.

“Infection by both Staphylococcus aureus sepsis and EV-D68 is a very rare combination that can cause very severe illness in children and adults,” the Rhode Island Department of Health said in a statement.

Enterovirus D68 typically causes flu-like symptoms, but in some cases it can cause wheezing and breathing problems that may require hospitalization.

A spike in cases among patients nationwide has reached 472 people, most of them children, in 41 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Concerns have also mounted over the emergence of nine cases in Colorado where children had respiratory infections that were followed by acute neurologic illness, including sudden limb weakness.

Experts are investigating whether there may be a link between the enterovirus outbreak and the paralysis cases.

Four cases of children who had recent respiratory infections, followed by neurologic illness with limb weakness are also being tracked in Boston, Massachusetts.

“At this time, a connection between EV-D68 and the neurologic illness with limb weakness has not been definitively proven,” Boston Children’s Hospital said in a statement.

The children range in age from four to 15 years old. One is in intensive care, two are hospitalized, and one has been discharged, the hospital added.

Some enteroviruses, including D68, have been shown in rare cases in the past to be capable of causing neurologic symptoms and sudden muscle weakness.

Viruses in this family typically circulate in the late summer to early fall, before flu season begins in earnest.

If the seasons start to overlap, experts say the potential for dual infections could be particularly dangerous for children with asthma.

There is no vaccine to prevent EV-D68, and frequent hand-washing is the best way to prevent it, experts say.

“We are all heartbroken to hear about the death of one of Rhode Island’s children,” said Michael Fine, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health.

“Many of us will have EV-D68. Most of us will have very mild symptoms and all but very few will recover quickly and completely. The vast majority of children exposed to EV-D68 recover completely.

AFP Photo/Marc Piscotty

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Sierra Leone’s Three-Day Ebola Shutdown Ends

Sierra Leone’s Three-Day Ebola Shutdown Ends

Freetown (AFP) — Millions of Sierra Leoneans emerged from their homes on Monday after a controversial nationwide lock-down during which scores of dead bodies and new cases of Ebola infections were uncovered.

The west African country had confined its six million people to their homes for 72 hours in a bid to stem a deadly outbreak which has claimed more than 2,600 lives there and in neighboring Liberia and Guinea this year.

“We have an overflow of bodies which we still need to bury but this has been an everyday occurrence since the Ebola outbreak… Now at least we have about 150 new cases,” Steven Gaojia, head of the country’s emergency operation center, said late Sunday.

The country’s chief medical officer earlier said up to 70 bodies had been uncovered, but these were in and around the capital, and results for the whole country are likely to push up the figures significantly.

Only essential workers such as health professionals were exempt from the shutdown, and some 30,000 volunteers who went door-to-door to hand out soap and give advice on halting the contagion.

– Begging for their lives –

Independent observers have voiced concerns over the quality of advice being given out, deeming the shutdown a “mixed success” and complaining about the poor training of the door-to-door education teams.

Meanwhile aid organizations and medical experts questioned the feasibility of reaching 1.5 million households in three days and argued that confining people to their homes could erode trust between the government and the people.

But Health Minister Abubakarr Fofanah told AFP volunteers had managed to reach around 80 percent of homes, deeming the action a success.

“We have learnt a lot from the campaign. Although this campaign has ended, there is a possibility we would have a similar one some other time,” he said.

“I cannot as of now give you statistics about the total corpses collected during the three-day period as we are now awaiting returns from other parts of the country and this will be made known as soon as the full report is compiled.”

Ebola fever can fell its victims within days, causing severe muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and — in many cases — unstoppable internal and external bleeding.

Fears of contagion have crippled the economies of affected nations, as wary workers stay home and cross border trade is disrupted.

The scale of the challenge is most evident in Liberia, where health workers at Ebola units have spoken of turning away people begging for their lives because they don’t have the beds or staff to treat them.

The country said on Sunday there would be a four-fold increase in hospital beds to 1,000 for patients in the capital Monrovia by the end of October.

– ‘In denial’ –

“Patients are being rejected… because there is no space. So the government is trying its best to finish the 1,000 beds so we can accommodate all the patients,” Information Minister Lewis Brown told AFP.

The move comes two weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the country, worst-hit in the outbreak with more than 1,450 deaths, was about to see a huge spike in infections, with thousands of new cases imminent.

The WHO was due on Monday to publish the latest findings of its Ebola emergency committee charged with deciding on what other temporary measures should be taken to reduce the risk of the deadly virus spreading further.

A second deployment of U.S. troops arrived on Sunday at Liberia’s international airport, 55 kilometers (35 miles) east of Monrovia, as part of an eventual 3,000-strong mission to help tackle the outbreak.

The team will set up a headquarters for Major General Darryl Williams, who will oversee the U.S. mission to train local health workers and establish additional medical facilities, he said.

Liberian health officials said action to stop the spread of the disease was also being hampered by traditional communities still ignoring advice on staying away from highly infectious dead bodies.

“Some people are still in denial. Because of that they are not listening to the rules,” said Gabriel Gorbee Logan
, a health officer in Bomi County, northwest of Monrovia.

“And there is still ongoing burial rites — rituals that citizens are carrying out. They’re in the habit of bathing dead bodies because tradition demands it.”

In Nigeria, thousands of students were preparing to return to school on Monday after an enforced summer break because of Ebola, which has claimed eight lives there.

Catholic missionary Manuel Garcia Viejo, 69, the second Spanish national to be infected, was returned overnight in a military plane to Madrid from Sierra Leone, according to Spanish media.

In August, a 75-year-old Spanish priest was the first European to be repatriated after becoming infected.

AFP Photo/Zoom Dosso

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