Access to more specialized hospital gear and internal and external communications should be improved, doctors told a state task force on Ebola on Thursday. A panel of doctors from hospitals across the state testified that there is a shortage of specialized personal protective equipment used by health care providers to treat Ebola. The demand is high in part because smaller hospitals are preparing.
As more U.S. troops head to West Africa, the Pentagon is developing portable isolation units that can carry up to 12 Ebola patients for transport on military planes.
The Obama administration has been pushing the governors of New York and New Jersey to reverse their decision ordering all medical workers returning from West Africa who had contact with Ebola patients to be quarantined, an administration official said on Sunday. But both governors, Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Chris Christie of New Jersey, stood by their decision, saying that the federal guidelines did not go far enough.
A doctor in New York City who recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Guinea became the first person in the city to test positive for the virus Thursday, setting off a search for anyone who might have come into contact with him. The doctor, Craig Spencer, was rushed to Bellevue Hospital Center and placed in isolation at the same time as investigators sought to retrace his steps over the past several days. At least three people he had contact with have been placed in isolation.
(YT) Are health authorities covering up the true extent of the Ebola crisis in America? Alex Jones talks with a Doctor from Missouri who says that not only is Ebola here, but it is being covered up and people are being disappeared…
A 33-year-old Doctors Without Borders physician who recently treated Ebola patients in Guinea was rushed in an ambulance with police escorts from his Harlem home to Bellevue Hospital on Thursday, sources said. Craig Spencer, who was was suffering from Ebola-like symptoms — a 103-degree fever and nausea — spent Wednesday night bowling in Williamsburg, the sources said. He used Uber taxis to get there and back.
Mali confirmed its first case of Ebola on Thursday, becoming the sixth West African country to be touched by the worst outbreak on record of the hemorrhagic fever, which has killed nearly 4,900 people. Mali’s Health Minister Ousmane Kone told state television that the patient in the western town of Kayes was a two-year-old girl who had recently arrived from neighboring Guinea, where the outbreak began. “The condition of the girl, according to our services, is improving thanks to her rapid treatment,” the minister told state television.
At least 4,877 people have died in the world’s worst recorded outbreak of Ebola as of Oct. 19, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, but the true toll may be three times as much. At least 9,936 cases of the disease had been recorded, according to the WHO, but the actual numbers may be three times higher.
President Obama told reporters Wednesday he is “cautiously more optimistic” that the chances of additional infections from Liberian traveler Thomas Eric Duncan are ebbing. However, amid Obama’s optimism, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the CDC is placing on the honor system travelers to the U.
Dr. Peter Jahrling has been on the ground in the Liberian capital of Monrovia, studying the disease with a team of researchers, which is also helping to care for and treat patients. He says the viral loads that his team is witnessing exceed what has been observed during previous outbreaks, suggesting that, this time, the disease is far more deadly.
After emerging months ago in eastern Sierra Leone, Ebola is now hitting the western edges of the country where the capital is located with dozens of people falling sick each day, the government said Tuesday. So many people are dying that removing bodies is reportedly a problem. Forty-nine confirmed cases of Ebola emerged in just one day, Monday, in two Ebola zones in and around the capital, the National Ebola Response Center, or NERC, said.
Johnson & Johnson is to start testing its Ebola vaccine candidate in January after the World Health Organisation (WHO) and world leaders asked it and other companies to accelerate their research programmes. GlaxoSmithKline, which is at a more advanced stage of vaccine development, separately said it would have the first doses of its serum available by the end of the year. The US drug giant said healthy volunteers in America, Africa and Europe would start receiving the vaccine, which has already shown “promise” in animal testing, early in the new year.
The Hot Zone was written by Richard Preston after he conducted dozens of interviews with virologists, scientists and doctors, many of which spent time on the front lines in Africa, hunting for the origins of Ebola. One scientist spent so much time looking for Ebola carriers in caves that he was jokingly called “Dr. Bat S#!
The United States is playing a game of Russian roulette by not closing its borders to the threat of Ebola from West Africa, contends a microbiology expert with 30 years experience in academics and private medical practice. Dr. William Miller, author of the pioneering 2013 book “The Microcosm Within:
President Barack Obama’s new ‘Ebola Czar’ Ron Klain is an enthusiastic advocate of population control who thinks that there are too many people in Africa. Klain’s role in overseeing the United States’ response to a virus that has killed thousands of Africans and threatens to infect up to 10,000 a week by December 1st is somewhat disconcerting given his views on overpopulation. In a recent interview, Klain said the top leadership issue challenging the world today was “how to deal with the continuing growing population in the world” including “burgeoning populations in Africa and Asia.
Ebola can spread by air in cold, dry weather common to the U.S. but not West Africa, presenting a “possible, serious threat” to the public, according to two studies by U.
On Saturday–one day after a bus that had departed from the Pentagon was quarantined on Capitol Hill in an Ebola false alarm–President Barack Obama issued a video message to Americans telling them that “you cannot get it [Ebola] from just riding on a plane or a bus.” “Ebola is actually a difficult disease to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu,” Obama said in his weekly video message.
The White House recently deleted a petition demanding President Obama do more to stop the spread of Ebola in the U.S. The Obama administration said the petition, which urged the White House to take proper action to fight Ebola, was removed from Whitehouse.
Considering the CDC’s conflicting and confusing statements – I’m not sure which is more dangerous – government incompetence or Ebola. Aside from being a grave threat to human life, an Ebola epidemic in the US would have serious consequences for our economy, inhibiting Americans from flying, going out to restaurants or to see a movie, or just going out in public in general. Just look at the public fear incurred in the past couple of days, with only one infected person (Amber Joy Vinson) travelling on a commercial airline.
The two nurses that caught Ebola while caring for Thomas Duncan in Texas Presbytarian hospitals didn’t have a chance. Not only were protocols not followed, but the hospital couldn’t follow them even if they tried. That’s because the Ebola virus is a Biosafety Level 4 microbe, requiring the highest level of biosafety possible.