Ebola report - 10/06/2014

Ebola in Europe

Nurse infected in Spain

Manuel Garcia Viejo was transferred to Spain from Sierra Leone but died days later

BBC,

6 October, 2014

Spanish Health Minister Ana Mato has confirmed that a nurse who treated two victims of Ebola in Madrid has tested positive for the disease.

The nurse is said to be the first person in the current outbreak known to have contracted Ebola outside Africa.

The woman was part of the team that treated Spanish priests Manuel Garcia Viejo and Miguel Pajares, who both died of the virus, officials say.

Some 3,400 people have died in the outbreak - mostly in West Africa.

Meanwhile US President Barack Obama has said the White House is considering extra screening at US airports for people arriving from the worst-affected countries in West Africa.

He said the chances for an Ebola outbreak in the US were extremely low, but vowed to step up the pressure on larger countries to help with efforts to contain the disease.

It comes as the US tries to limit the spread from its first confirmed case, a Liberian in Dallas.

High fever

The Spanish nurse is in a stable condition, Ms Mato said. She started to feel ill last week when she was on holiday.

Manuel Garcia Viejo, seen in a file photo, was the second Spanish priest to be repatriated from Africa with Ebola

The nurse was admitted to hospital in Alcorcon, near Madrid, on Monday morning with a high fever, she said.

"Both the health ministry and public health authorities are working together to give the best care to the patient and to guarantee the safety of all citizens," the minister told a news conference.

Manuel Garcia Viejo, 69, died in the hospital Carlos III de Madrid on 25 September after catching Ebola in Sierra Leone.

Miguel Pajares, 75, died in August after contracting the virus in Liberia.

Nurse Contracts Ebola in Spain

October 2014 – SPAIN - Raising fresh concern around the world, a nurse in Spain on Monday became the first person known to catch Ebola outside the outbreak zone in West Africa. In what is believed to be the first infection outside of Africa, an assistant nurse at a Madrid hospital where two Ebola patients died has contracted the virus herself, health officials said Monday. “Two tests were done and the two were positive,” a spokesman for the health department of the regional government of Madrid said. The woman works at Madrid’s La Paz-Carlos III hospital where two missionaries who were repatriated from Africa with Ebola died from the disease, a spokeswoman for the hospital said. “We do not know yet if she treated any of the two missionaries,” the spokeswoman said. Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, 75, was infected with Ebola in Liberia and died at the hospital on August 12.

In the U.S., President Barack Obama said the government was considering ordering more careful screening of airline passengers arriving from the region. In dealing with potential Ebola cases, Obama said, “we don’t have a lot of margin for error.” Already hospitalized in the U.S., a critically ill Liberian man, Thomas Duncan, began receiving an experimental drug in Dallas. But there were encouraging signs for an American video journalist who returned from Liberia for treatment. Ashoka Mukpo, 33, was able to walk off the plane before being loaded on a stretcher and taken to an ambulance, and his father said his symptoms of fever and nausea appeared mild. “It was really wonderful to see his face,” said Dr. Mitchell Levy, who talked to his son over a video chat system at Nebraska Medical Center. In Spain, the stricken nurse had been part of a team that treated two missionaries flown home to Spain after becoming infected with Ebola in West Africa. The nurse’s only symptom was a fever, but the infection was confirmed by two tests, Spanish health officials said. She was being treated in isolation, while authorities drew up a list of people she had had contact with. Medical workers in Texas were among Americans waiting to find out whether they had been infected by Duncan, the African traveler.

In Washington, the White House continued to rule out any blanket ban on travel from West Africa. People leaving the outbreak zone are checked for fevers before they’re allowed to board airplanes, but the disease’s incubation period is 21 days and symptoms could arise later. Airline crews and border agents already watch for obviously sick passengers, and in a high-level meeting at the White House, officials discussed potential options for screening passengers when they arrive in the U.S. as well. Obama said the U.S. will be “working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States.” He did not outline any details or offer a timeline for when new measures might begin. The Obama administration maintains that the best way to protect Americans is to end the outbreak in Africa. To that end, the U.S. military was working Monday on the first of 17 promised medical centers in Liberia and training up to 4,000 soldiers this week to help with the Ebola crisis. The U.S. is equipped to stop any further cases that reach this country, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “The tragedy of this situation is that Ebola is rapidly spreading among populations in West African who don’t have that kind of medical infrastructure,” Earnest said.

About 350 U.S. troops are already in Liberia, the Pentagon said, to begin building a 25-bed field hospital for medical workers infected with Ebola. A torrential rain delayed the start of the job on Monday. The virus has taken an especially devastating toll on health care workers, sickening or killing more than 370 in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — places that already were short on doctors and nurses before Ebola. Texas Gov. Rick Perry urged the U.S. government to begin screening air passengers arriving from Ebola-affected nations, including taking their temperatures. Perry stopped short, however, of joining some conservatives who have backed bans on travel from those countries. Federal health officials say a travel ban could make the desperate situation worse in the afflicted countries, and White House spokesman Earnest said it was not currently under consideration. Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said he saw no need for additional screening at airports and noted that airlines already carefully clean planes.

Airlines have dealt with previous epidemics, such as the 2003 outbreak in Asia of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. “Now it’s Ebola,” Kelly said. “We are always on the alert for any kind of infectious disease.” The U.S. didn’t ban flights or impose extra screening on passengers during the SARS outbreak or the 2009 swine flu pandemic. Both of those were airborne diseases that spread more easily than the Ebola virus, which is spread by contact with bodily fluids. The CDC did meet many direct flights arriving from SARS-affected countries, to distribute health notices advising travelers that they might have been exposed, how they could monitor their health and when to call a doctor.

Canadian health authorities attempted various methods of screening arriving passengers for SARS, including sometimes checking for fever. Authorities later reported that five SARS patients entered Canada in three months, but none had symptoms while traveling through airports. General airport fever checks aren’t very effective, especially as flu season begins, said Lawrence Gostin, a prominent health law professor at Georgetown University. But checking and questioning only passengers from the outbreak zone “might reassure the public. I don’t think there would be a big downside.” The SARS death rate was about 10 percent, higher for older patients. Its new relative MERS, now spreading in the Middle East, appears to be more deadly, about 40 percent. About half of people infected with Ebola have died in this outbreak. –News D

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