US Ebola victim now 鈥榗ritical鈥 as hospitals heighten patient checks
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THE first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States took a turn for the worse on Saturday, slipping from serious to critical condition in a Dallas hospital.
Meanwhile, health officials reported tracking scores of possible cases around the country that proved to be false alarms.
The case of Thomas Eric Duncan, who arrived in Dallas from Liberia two weeks ago, has heightened concerns that the worst epidemic of Ebola on record could spread from West Africa where it began in March and has taken more than 3,400 lives.
Dr Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said hospitals nationwide had become more vigilant in checking incoming patients for potential risks, particularly among those traveling recently from West Africa.
In the meantime, the CDC has narrowed down the number of individuals in Dallas at greatest risk of infection from Duncan, identifying nine people who had direct contact with him.
Another 40 were being monitored as potential contacts, out of a group of 114 people initially evaluated for exposure risks, though none from either group has shown symptoms, Frieden said.
Ebola, which can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea, spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as blood or saliva.
Frieden also told a Saturday news conference that US health authorities had responded to inquiries regarding well over 100 potential cases since Duncan tested positive, but no new cases of the disease have been confirmed.
A hospital patient in Sarasota, Florida, was being monitored and treated for possible symptoms in isolation as a precaution because he, too, had traveled recently to West Africa.
But a patient admitted under similar circumstances to Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC, after a recent trip to Nigeria has been ruled out as an Ebola victim.
In New Jersey on Saturday, CDC agents in biohazard suits removed a sick passenger and his daughter from a United Airlines jet from Belgium that landed at Newark Liberty International Airport. But the health agency later said Ebola had been ruled out after tests on the man, who had traveled from West Africa.
Duncan, now being treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, was sent home after his first visit to the emergency room, despite telling a nurse he had just been to Liberia.
On Saturday, the hospital said he was in a critical condition. It declined to elaborate.
Duncan became ill on the night of September 25 and visited the emergency room at Presbyterian Hospital, but had been sent home without being screened for Ebola.
Days before flying to Texas via Brussels and Washington, Duncan had helped a pregnant woman in Liberia who later died of Ebola, a fact that he concealed from airport authorities in Liberia before boarding the plane.
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins told a Dallas NBC News affiliate his office was considering whether to pursue a possible criminal case against Duncan, though he did not specify on what basis Duncan might be charged.
The woman he was staying with, identified in the media as Louise Troh, had been ordered to stay inside her apartment with her 13-year-old son and two adult nephews who lived there.
On Friday, the family agreed to move to an isolated four-bedroom house in a gated community in an undisclosed location in the city.
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