WASHINGTON POST

By Katie Zezima                               Oct. 18. 2014

WASHINGTON -Public health officials have been nearly unanimous in rejecting the idea of a travel ban between the United States and the West African countries at the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak.

But the drumbeat from politicians demanding Ebola-related restrictions on travel intensified Friday as a number of moderate Democrats joined the chorus, including Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, who is enmeshed in a tough reelection fight, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii and Michelle Nunn, who is running for Senate in Georgia....

The calls have alarmed public health experts, who said a travel ban could result in the opposite of its intention and spread the virus throughout West Africa and beyond.

“It’s an 18th-century view that you can somehow place a cellophane wrapper around a whole region of the world and expect to keep germs out. It doesn’t work that way because it’s never worked,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University and director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law & Human Rights.

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THE GUARDIAN                              Oct. 18, 2014

WASHINGTON- President Barack Obama on Saturday urged Americans not to succumb to hysteria about Ebola, even as he warned that addressing the deadly virus would require citizens, government leaders and the media to all pitch in.

in his weekly address, Obama also pushed back against calls for the US to institute a travel ban. Lawmakers have called it a commonsense step to prevent more people with Ebola from entering the US, but Obama said such a ban would only hamper aid efforts and screening measures.

“Trying to seal off an entire region of the world – if that were even possible – could actually make the situation worse,” the president said.

Growing US concern about Ebola and the three cases diagnosed so far in Dallas prompted Obama on Friday to tap a former top White House adviser to be his point person on Ebola. Striking a careful balance, Obama said there was no “outbreak” or “epidemic” of Ebola in the US, but said even one case was too many.

“This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear – because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need,” Obama said. “We have to be guided by the science.”

NEW YORK TIMES                                

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday appointed Ron Klain, a former chief of staff for Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as Ebola “czar” to manage the government’s response to the deadly virus as anxiety grew over its possible spread, according to a White House official.

Ron Klain, a former chief of staff for Vice Presidents Al Gore and Joseph R. Biden Jr., in 2008. Credit Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

NEW YORK TIMES   WRAPUP OF THE MANY DEVELOPMENTS   for Oct. 26, 3024 

UPDATE

CONGRESSIONAL HEARING ON EBOLA: STORIES  AND LINK TO TESTIMONY BEFORE A HOUSE  ENERGY AND COMMERCE SUBCOMMITTEE   (scroll down)

By Will Duham

(Reuters) - Congressional lawmakers criticized the government's response to Ebola in the United States on Thursday as some called, at a congressional hearing probing efforts to contain the virus, for a ban on travel from epidemic-stricken West Africa.

Federal Aviation Administration chief Michael Huerta told reporters separately that the United States is assessing whether to issue a travel ban "on a day-to-day basis" but that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had determined that a ban would not address the challenges posed by Ebola.

...Several schools in Ohio and Texas were closed after concerns that a nurse with Ebola traveled on a plane with people with ties to the schools.

NPR                           Oct. 16, 2014

WASHINGTON --A top government health official confirms that Nina Pham, the 26-year-old nurse who became infected with Ebola after treating a patient with the disease at a Dallas hospital, will be transferred to a high-level containment facility at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said in testimony before a House committee that Pham will be admitted to the NIH tonight.

There she will will be given "state of the art care" in a high-level containment facility, he says.

Officials have said Pham's condition is good. Another nurse, Amber Vinson, who also cared for index patient Thomas Eric Duncan has also contracted the disease. Duncan died from the disease last week.

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http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/10/16/356594638/house-panel-hearing-to-examine-public-health-response-to-ebola-outbreak

NEW YORK TIMES                                                                  Oct 15, 2014
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

A dummy depicting an Ebola patient was part of a C.D.C. training session for health care workers Wednesday in Anniston, Ala. Credit Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency

NEW YORK TIMES                            OCT. 15, 2014
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR                              

President Obamaon Wednesday directed his aides to monitor the spread of Ebola in the United States “in a much more aggressive way,” but said the American people should remain confident in the government’s ability to prevent a widespread outbreak of the deadly disease.

After a two-hour meeting of cabinet-level officials who are in charge of the government’s response to the virus, Mr. Obama promised that a review of the recent Ebola cases in Dallas would determine what went wrong that allowed two nurses to be infected.

With a video link to Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, the president said he had ordered health officials to determine, “How we are going to make sure that something like this isn’t repeated.”

REUTERS                                                          Wed Oct 15, 2014 5:10pm EDT

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 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.

NEW YORK TIMES

The nurse survived, but according to the aid group that sent her to Liberia and arranged to get her out, Europe’s failure to establish a swift evacuation service for infected medical workers has become a serious hurdle impeding the battle against Ebola in West Africa.

WASHINGTON POST                           Oct. 15, 2014

By Abby Phillip and Fred Barbash

A second Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital worker who tested positive for Ebola flew on a commercial flightfrom Cleveland to Dallas on Monday, the day before she reported symptoms of the virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

The health worker, who has not been named, cared for an Ebola-stricken Liberian man at the hospital, then tested positive for the disease in a preliminary test, Texas health officials announced Wednesday morning.

She flew on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 at around 6 p.m. on Oct. 13. There were 132 passengers on board, according to the airline and health officials. The CDC said it is working to reach out those passengers and is also asking them to call a hotline.

The agency and the airline also said that the health-care worker did not exhibit any symptoms while on the flight. A person infected with Ebola is only contagious once the person becomes symptomatic.

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EMORY AND NEBRASKA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTERS SHARE DETAILS OF THEIR PROCEDURES WITH OTHER HOSPITALS

TIME MAGAZINE                                                                     Oct. 14, 2014

By Alexandra Sifferlin

Physicians who are treating patients with the Ebola virus at Emory University Hospital and the University of Nebraska Medical Center shared their advice and protocols with worried hospitals and health care providers over a phone conference on Tuesday. Whether the conference really quelled these fears, however, was not exactly clear.

The intent of the conference, which was organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), was to answer health care questions related to admitting and treating a patient with Ebola. There’s growing concern among health officials that hospitals without specialized isolation units and with little experience treating serious communicable diseases may not be fully prepared to treat the disease....

Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, seen in August 2014. Jessica McGowan—Getty Images

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF DALLAS HOPSITAL'S LEARNING ON THE FLY TO COPE WITH ITS FIRST EBOLA PATIENT.

THE WASHINGTON POST           Oct. 15, 2014
By Amy Ellis Nutt, Abby Phillip and Joel Achenbach

DALLAS — The hospital that treated Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan had to learn on the fly how to control the deadly virus, adding new layers of protective gearfor workers in what became a losing battle to keep the contagion from spreading, a top official with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

“They kept adding more protective equipment as the patient [Duncan] deteriorated. They had masks first, then face shields, then the positive-pressure respirator. They added a second pair of gloves,” said Pierre Rollin, a CDC epidemiologist.

Officials work to decontaminate the apartment of the second healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola.
(Photo: Maj. Max Geron, Dallas Police Department)

A second person involved in the care of Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has contracted the disease. The news follows a scathing report by a nurses union that Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital had "no protocol" in place to care for Duncan.

usatoday.com - by Rick Jervis and Doug Stanglin - October 15, 2014

DALLAS — A second hospital worker who helped care for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has tested positive for the disease, prompting local officials to warn Wednesday that more cases "is a real possibility."

The unidentified health-care worker, who was described as a woman who lived alone without pets, reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

At an early morning news conference, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he could not rule out more cases among 75 other hospital staffers who cared for Duncan and were being monitored by the CDC.