Five students from four schools in Texas are being monitored after they had contact with a patient now being treated for Ebola at a Dallas hospital.
The patient, identified as Thomas Eric Duncan, tested positive for the lethal disease at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Tuesday, representing the first diagnosed case of the disease on US soil.
The school-age children exposed to the patient are among between 12 to 18 people who came into contact with him when he suffering from the symptoms of the disease, Dallas health officials said.
“The children have been identified and they are being monitored,” Texas governor Rick Perry said at a press conference, attempting to reassure the public that health officials in the state were well- equipped to cope with further exposure to this case.
He said that it was “all hands on deck” to contain the disease and stressed that Ebola was “substantially more difficult to contract than the common cold.”
Mr Duncan’s sister Mai Wureh told the Associated Press news service that her brother had told a nurse when he went to the Texas hospital last Friday that he was visiting the US from Liberia and that he was sent home with antibiotics to treat what was diagnosed as a low-grade viral infection.
He returned to the hospital two days later after his condition deteriorated and was admitted.
Texas health officials said that the nurse did not relay critical information about the patient to other medical personnel during his first visit to the emergency department.
Information was “not fully communicated” to the medical team who treated him, said Mark Lester, an executive at the Texas hospital. He categorised the patient’s condition as “serious but stable.”
Blood tests were carried out on the man on his first visit to the hospital but no Ebola screening took place despite visiting from the disease-ravaged country where, according to the World Health Organisation, there had been 3,458 reported cases and 1,830 deaths by September 23rd.
Dr Lester refused to describe the earlier mis-diagnosis of the patient’s condition as a “misstep,” saying that not all of the information had been factored in by the time a clinical decision had been made on his condition.
David Lackey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said that there was no risk of Ebola spreading.
“This is not west Africa, this is a very sophisticated city, a very sophisticated hospital,” said Dr Lakey. “The chances of it being spread are very, very small.”
