pfft, quarantine, I'm going to get some dinner, who needs a stinking quarantine
NBC Chief Medical Correspondent Nancy Snyderman, apparently not a fan of Ebola quarantines, is now under police surveillance after she was spotted out in public in New Jersey last week.
According to reports, Snyderman and three other crew members who worked with freelance cameraman Ashoka Mukpo in Liberia agreed to quarantine themselves for 21 days as part of a voluntary arrangement with the Centers for Disease Control and state officials.
But less than a week after Mukpo tested positive for the virus, a Gawker reader sent in a tip about Snyderman getting food from the Peasant Grill in Hopewell, New Jersey.
Says the tipster:
Dr. Nancy Snyderman, the NBC on-air doctor whose cameraman was diagnosed with ebola, is supposed to be under quarantine for 21 days. She happens to live in my neighborhood in Princeton, NJ, where her reputation as a bit of an arrogant specimen had me idly remarking last night that if ever there were someone likely to flout the quarantine and leave their house, it was her.
Fast forward to today: my wife and a friend are virtually certain they spotted her in a car outside a restaurant in Hopewell, NJ within the past hour. She sent a guy in to retrieve her food and remained in the car. It appeared that as soon as she thought she'd been spotted, she looked away and put on sunglasses. My wife's friend immediately called both the Hopewell and Princeton police, who said they'd "look into it."
The sighting was first reported by Planet Princeton, and New Jersey officials issued a mandatory quarantine order on Friday after their story broke. Police are now reportedly patrolling Snyderman's neighborhood to make sure she doesn't sneak out again.
On Monday's NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams read a brief statement from Snyderman, in which the good doctor allowed that "members of our group violated those [quarantine] guidelines and understand that our quarantine is now mandatory."
NBC has reportedly refused to comment.
http://gawker.com/nbc-chief-medical-correspondent-quarantined-for-ebola-1645924287
well that's pretty disturbing to think of
Nurses at a Texas hospital where a Liberian man died of Ebola described a confused and chaotic response to his arrival in the emergency room, alleging in a statement Tuesday that he languished for hours in a room with other patients and that hospital authorities resisted isolating him.
In addition, they said, the nurses tending him had flimsy protective gear and no proper training from hospital administrators in handling such a patient.
The allegations, made under unusual circumstances, provided the first detailed portrait of Thomas Eric Duncan's second trip to the emergency room, where he arrived by ambulance days after doctors had sent him home with a fever, a headache, abdominal pain and a prescription for antibiotics.
Tuesday's claims came during a conference call with reporters in which none of the nurses from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital spoke or was identified to reporters. A statement outlining a litany of damning assertions was read by Deborah Burger, co-president of National Nurses United. The Oakland-based nurses union does not represent the Dallas nurses, who are nonunionized, but has been vocal about what it says are hospitals' failures to prepare for Ebola.
The Dallas nurses asked the union to read their statement so they could air complaints anonymously and without fear of losing their jobs, National Nurses United Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro said from Oakland. DeMoro refused to say how many nurses signed off on the letter or how many were on the media call, but she said all of them worked at Texas Health Presbyterian and had been involved in Duncan's care or had direct knowledge of what had occurred after he arrived by ambulance Sept. 28.
They were spurred to speak out after their colleague Nina Pham, a 26-year-old registered nurse, contracted Ebola while treating Duncan, according to DeMoro. She said the nurses were angered over what they perceived to be health officials' suggestions that Pham made a mistake that led to her exposure to the virus, which is believed to have killed more than 4,400 people in West Africa.
The nurses' statement alleged that when Duncan was brought to Texas Health Presbyterian by ambulance with Ebola-like symptoms, he was “left for several hours, not in isolation, in an area” where up to seven other patients were. “Subsequently, a nurse supervisor arrived and demanded that he be moved to an isolation unit, yet faced stiff resistance from other hospital authorities,” they alleged.
Duncan's lab samples were sent through the usual hospital tube system “without being specifically sealed and hand-delivered. The result is that the entire tube system … was potentially contaminated,” they said.
The statement described a hospital with no clear rules on how to handle Ebola patients, despite months of alerts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta about the possibility of Ebola coming to the United States.
“There was no advanced preparedness on what to do with the patient. There was no protocol. There was no system. The nurses were asked to call the infectious disease department” if they had questions, but that department didn't have answers either, the statement said. So nurses were essentially left to figure things out on their own as they dealt with “copious amounts” of highly contagious bodily fluids from the dying Duncan while they wore gloves with no wrist tape, flimsy gowns that did not cover their necks, and no surgical booties, the statement alleged.
“Hospital officials allowed nurses who interacted with Mr. Duncan to then continue normal patient-care duties,” potentially exposing others, it said.
There was no way to independently confirm the allegations, which are in sharp contrast to statements from hospital officials. Since Duncan's diagnosis last month and subsequent death, they have portrayed the 898-bed facility as up-to-date on CDC guidelines and prepared to handle Ebola.
“Patient and employee safety is our greatest priority, and we take compliance very seriously,” the hospital said in a statement. “We have numerous measures in place to provide a safe working environment, including mandatory annual training and a 24-7 hotline and other mechanisms that allow for anonymous reporting. Our nursing staff is committed to providing quality, compassionate care, as we have always known, and as the world has seen firsthand in recent days. We will continue to review and respond to any concerns raised by our nurses and all employees.”
In an interview after the nurses' statement was released, one of Pham's close friends, Jennifer Joseph, said Pham had never complained to her about problems at the hospital before or after she had been assigned to care for Duncan. Joseph, 25, is a nurse who once worked at the same hospital. She said she had been in regular contact with Pham since her hospitalization Friday.
Joseph said her friend was confident in the hospital's protocols for preventing infection. She described Pham as a “brilliant” and caring nurse who was drafted to tend to Duncan because of her calm demeanor and experience.
Earlier in the day, before the nurses' allegations were released, the hospital reported that Pham was in good condition and issued a statement from her. In it, Pham said she was “blessed to be cared for by the best team of doctors and nurses in the world,” adding, “I'm doing well and want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers.”
The nurses' allegations are sure to add to the questions surrounding the Dallas facility's handling of Duncan, who first came to the ER on Sept. 25 only to be sent home again.
Although CDC Director Thomas Frieden has praised the hospital and its staff, he said Tuesday that the CDC might have prevented Pham's infection if it had responded more aggressively to Duncan's case. CDC experts were in the hospital Tuesday watching medical workers as they donned and removed the protective gear required to treat Pham and as they moved in and out of her isolation room. The goal is to ensure they follow guidelines to prevent transmission of the virus.
The CDC also plans to launch an “Ebola response team,” which will go to any hospital that reports an Ebola case. It will include healthcare workers with experience in Ebola outbreaks, Frieden said.
“I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed,” he added, referring to Duncan. “That might have prevented this infection. But we will do that from this day onward.”
Although the CDC sent infectious disease specialists to Dallas after Duncan's diagnosis, Frieden said, “with 20/20 hindsight,” he might have sent “a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on” at the hospital.
Frieden said 76 other healthcare workers from the hospital were being monitored for possible Ebola symptoms, because they also might have been affected by whatever mistake led to Pham's exposure. And a man who had direct contact with Pham was in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian, even though he had not shown signs of illness.
Also Tuesday, Duncan’s nephew wrote in a Dallas Morning News article that the hospital had provided his uncle with substandard care. Josephus Weeks, a U.S. Army veteran who lives in North Carolina, questioned “the lack of answers and transparency coming from a hospital whose ignorance, incompetence and indecency has yet to be explained.”
“What happened at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas must never happen to another family,” Weeks wrote.
And the World Health Organization predicted Tuesday that the deadly virus could lead to 5,000 to 10,000 new cases a week in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the hardest-hit countries.
The WHO’s assistant director-general, Bruce Aylward, said at a Geneva news conference that some areas were seeing a slowing of new cases, which epidemiologists think is a result of greater awareness and a stepped-up response. But about 70% of those who fall ill in the three countries are dying, he said. He cautioned against assuming the outbreak had slowed.
“Quite frankly, it’s too early to say,” he said, adding that numbers can fluctuate because of lags in reporting and high caseloads. “People may draw the wrong conclusion that this is coming under control.”
When Holding An Orphaned Baby Can Mean Contracting Ebola
Anne Purfield and Michelle Dynes are epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They spent the past several weeks responding to the Ebola epidemic in the Kenema district of Sierra Leone, and recently returned to Atlanta.
One of the many difficult aspects of working around the disease is not being able to comfort people who are grieving, Purfield and Dynes explain during a visit to StoryCorps in Atlanta. (Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids.)
"You can't touch anyone," says Purfield, 37. "You can't comfort them."
"Imagine losing 10 members of your family, and no one giving you a hug," replies Dynes, 39, a nurse epidemiologist.
One day, an Ebola-infected mother brought her baby into a hospital, Purfield recalls. The mother died, and the baby was left in a box.
"They tested the baby, and the baby was negative," says Purfield. "But I think the symptoms in babies and the disease progression in babies is different than adults.
"So the nurses would pick up and cuddle the baby. And they were taking care of the baby in the box," she continues.
Twelve of those nurses subsequently contracted Ebola, Purfield says. Only one survived.
"They couldn't just watch a baby sitting alone in a box," Dynes says.
The toll on Sierra Leone's local health care workers has been high. "By the time we had arrived," Dynes adds, "more than 20 nurses had died from Ebola. And nearly all of the phlebotomists had died. ... They've taken care of their own colleagues and watched them all die."
"And they still go back into the wards," says Purfield.
"It just hits you really hard, because you realize we're only here for five weeks, six weeks," Dynes says. "They're here for the long haul."
19 Feb ’12
This just gets better and better.
By Lisa Maria Garza and Terry Wade
DALLAS (Reuters) - A second Texas nurse who contracted Ebola flew on a commercial flight from Ohio to Texas with a slight temperature the day before she was diagnosed, health officials said on Wednesday, raising new concerns about U.S. efforts to control the disease.
Chances that other passengers on the plane were infected were very low, but the nurse should not have been traveling on the flight, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.
The woman, Amber Vinson, 29, was isolated immediately after reporting a fever on Tuesday, Texas Department of State Health Services officials said. She had treated Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola on Oct. 8 and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.
Vinson, a worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, had taken a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, officials said.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said the likelihood of a widespread Ebola outbreak was "very, very low." But he pledged a more aggressive response to U.S. Ebola cases from federal officials and would do everything possible to ensure no more healthcare workers are infected.
Obama met with Cabinet officials to discuss the government's response to the Ebola situation after canceling a planned political trip to New Jersey and Connecticut.
The CDC said earlier that it was asking all of the more than 130 passengers who were also on the Frontier flight to call a CDC hotline.
Government officials said Vinson was being transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which has successfully treated two people who contracted the disease in West Africa and were flown back to the United States.
At least 4,493 people, predominantly in West Africa, have died in the worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976, but cases in the United States and Europe have been limited. The virus can cause fever, bleeding, vomiting and diarrhea, and spreads through contact with bodily fluids.
Frieden said Vinson had been monitoring herself for symptoms of Ebola and failed to report that her temperature had risen to 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit (37.5 degrees Celsius) before she left for Dallas.
Even so, Frieden, who has come under pressure for apparent lapses in U.S. preparedness to fight Ebola, said the risk to other passengers was "very low" because she did not vomit on the flight and was not bleeding.
A statement from the CDC and Frontier Airlines said Vinson flew out of Dallas/Fort Worth on Friday and flew back home to Dallas on Frontier Flight 1143 on Monday.
Vinson, who was visiting family in Ohio, is related to three Kent State University employees. The school's health services director, Dr. Angela DeJulius, said the family members had been asked to remain off campus for 21 days, while monitoring themselves for possible symptoms of Ebola in line with CDC protocols.
U.S. airline stocks tumbled again on Wednesday on renewed fears of a drop-off in air travel. Ebola fears also contributed to a nearly 2 percent drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was under pressure from global economic concerns.
Over the weekend, 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham became the first person to be infected with Ebola in the United States. She had cared for Duncan during much of his 11 days in the hospital.
The hospital said on Wednesday that Pham continued to be "in good condition."
National Nurses United, which is both a union and a professional association for U.S. nurses, said on Tuesday that the hospital lacked protocols to deal with an Ebola patient, offered no advanced training and provided nurses with insufficient gear, including suits that left their necks exposed.
'PILED TO THE CEILING'
Basic principles of infection control were violated by both the hospital's Infectious Disease Department and CDC officials, the nurses said, with no one picking up hazardous waste "as it piled to the ceiling."
"The nurses strongly feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to, and deserted to handle the situation on their own," the statement said.
The hospital said in a statement that it had instituted measures to create a safe working environment and it was reviewing and responding to the nurses' criticisms.
Speaking early Wednesday on CBS "This Morning," U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell declined to comment on the nurses’ allegations.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said at a news conference Wednesday that the second infected nurse lived alone. He said local health officials moved quickly to clean affected areas and to alert her neighbors and friends. A decontamination could be seen taking place at her residence.
Residents at The Bend East in the Village apartment complex were awoken early Wednesday by text messages from property managers saying a neighbor had tested positive for Ebola, and pamphlets had been stuffed beneath doors and left under doormats, said a resident, who asked not to be named.
Other residents were concerned enough that they were limiting time spent outdoors.
"Everybody thinks this won't happen because we are in the United States. But it is happening," said Esmeralda Lazalde, who lives about a mile from where the first nurse who contracted Ebola resides.
Texas Health Presbyterian is doing everything it can to contain the virus, said Dr. Daniel Varga of Texas Health Resources, which owns the hospital. "I don't think we have a systematic institutional problem," he said at a news conference on Wednesday.
At the same briefing, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county's chief political officer, said authorities were anticipating additional possible Ebola cases.
"We are preparing contingencies for more, and that is a very real possibility," Jenkins said.
(Additional reporting by Jim Forsyth in San Antonio, Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington D.C. and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Writing by Jonathan Kaminsky and Curtis Skinner; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Jonathan Oatis and Tom Brown)
https://news.yahoo.com/second-texas-healthcare-worker-tests-positive-ebola-090736415.html
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