Ebola test clears Dallas worker
Print Edition
A DALLAS hospital lab worker who spent much of a cruise holiday in isolation after possible exposure to Ebola has tested negative for the disease, and in Texas some of the dozens of people still being monitored were expected to be cleared yesterday and today.
The Carnival Magic docked in the port of Galveston, Texas, after a week-long cruise that included being denied docking by Belize and Mexico because of the presence of the woman on board.
The precautions taken over the Texas lab worker reflected anxiety over the spread of Ebola.
Three cases of the disease have been diagnosed in the United States, and dozens of people are being monitored having been exposed to the three patients.
The worst outbreak on record of the virus, which is spread by contact with bodily fluids of sick people, has killed more than 4,500 people, mostly in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf yesterday urged stronger international action to bring the epidemic under control, saying the disease is unleashing an economic catastrophe that will leave a “lost generation” of young West Africans.
The lab worker who was being monitored aboard the cruise liner worked at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital where a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, was treated for Ebola.
The worker, who has not been named, did not have contact with Duncan but was being monitored as she might have come in contact with test samples from Duncan. Two nurses who treated Duncan, who died on October 8, have contracted the disease.
Texas state authorities said 14 people had been cleared from an Ebola watch list. Yesterday and today, more were expected to end 21 days of monitoring for fever and other symptoms. The incubation period for the virus is up to 21 days.
They could include Duncan’s fiancee, Louise Troh, her 13-year-old son and two other people who have been in mandatory quarantine at an undisclosed location in Dallas.
In all, 145 people with “contacts and possible contacts” with the virus were being monitored, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement on Saturday. The dates when the 145 people began monitoring varies.
Amid panic, President Barack Obama sought to put the extent of the disease in the United States in perspective in his weekly radio address on Saturday.
“What we’re seeing now is not an ‘outbreak’ or an ‘epidemic’ of Ebola in America,” he said. “This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear.”
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