UPDATE

Officials: ‘About 100′ people may have had contact with the Texas Ebola patient

WASHINGTON  POST   OCTOBER 2, 2014  10:03 AM

Texas health officials said Thursday that there are "about 100" people who may have had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who is being treated in a Dallas-area hospital for Ebola.

A patient was diagnosed with Ebola on Sept. 30 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.(Photo: Mike Stone, Getty Images)

THE WASHINGTON POST

By Mark Berman October 1 at 3:15 PM

The man in Texas who tested positive for Ebola told hospital officials he had traveled from West Africa when he sought treatment on Friday, but that information was not relayed to everyone treating him at that time, authorities said Wednesday.

As a result, the man was diagnosed with a “low-grade, common viral disease” and sent home that day, said Mark C. Lester, executive vice president of the health-care system that includes Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the Dallas facility treating the Ebola patient.

“Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated throughout the full team,” Lester said during a news conference Wednesday. “As a result, the full import of that information wasn’t factored into the clinical decision-making.”

Updated with link to CDC statement (below)

The WASHINGTON post September 30 at 5:29 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of Ebola that's been diagnosed in the United States.

The Texas Department of Health Services said in a statement that the patient is at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. The patient -- "an adult with a recent history of travel to West Africa" -- was admitted into an isolation unit at the hospital Sunday after developing Ebola-like symptoms "days after returning to Texas from West Africa."

The test, the Texas health department said, was conducted at the state public health laboratory in Austin and later confirmed by the CDC.

The state health lab got the ability to test for Ebola only last month, according to Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of State Health Services.

Link to full story

Thomson Reuters Foundation

By Stella Dawson

Mon Sep 29, 2014 

WASHINGTON - The rainy season in West Africa is compounding difficulties in getting supplies delivered and new treatment centers built as donors rush to isolate people infected with the deadly Ebola virus and stop its rapid spread, U.S. officials said.

Nancy Powell, newly appointed as the U.S. State Department's envoy to coordinate its Ebola response, said the top priority is to isolate as many people as quickly as possible. But that faces significant logistical hurdles.

"Infrastructure challenges in the rainy season is one of the biggest difficulties. And you add the rain and getting materials out of the capital and it is very difficult," Powell said in a news briefing last week.

The July to September rainy season is coming toward its end, but October is known for heavy thunderstorms that can drench the region and turn roads to mud.

Eric Talbert, executive director of Emergency USA which has opened a 22-bed Ebola treatment center in Goderich, outside the capital of Freetown in Sierra Leone, said the downpours complicate getting supplies along unpaved single track roads that are washed out by the heavy rains..