Photo credit: wolhazmat.de
A second nurse has
been diagnosed with the Ebola virus. Bryan Preston at PJ Media reports:
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The CDC has announced that the
second healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola traveled by air Oct. 13, the day
before she first reported symptoms.
The CDC is now reaching out to all passengers who flew on
Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth. The flight landed
at 8:16 p.m. CT.
The CDC is asking all 132 passengers on the flight to call 1
800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636). Public health professionals will begin interviewing
passengers about the flight after 1 p.m. ET.
Fox 8
News has more here.
And it
gets scarier. PJ Media again:
Dr. Betsy McCaughey appeared on Fox just
after she had attend a CDC conference call with hospitals this afternoon.
Host Stuart Varney asked her what it would take to set up 50
hospitals to be ready for Ebola.
McCaughey’s answer is stunning.
According to her, after the CDC outlined its preparation strategy,
one hospital administrator responded, “What you’re telling us would bankrupt my
hospital!” She said that that administrator represents a Southern California
hospital.
McCaughey noted that there was no word on the call of who would
pay for hospitals to get themselves ready for Ebola patients.
And then she added: “Treating one Ebola patient requires, full time,
20 medical staff. Mostly ICU (intensive care unit) people. So that would wipe
out an ICU in an average-sized hospital.”
In the case of Texas Presbyterian, McCaughey says that the
hospital cordoned off its ICU to care for Thomas Eric Duncan and sent the rest
of its ICU patients to other area hospitals. She added that many communities
will not have multiple hospitals to choose from, so one Ebola case could
cripple ICUs in small towns.
“But the most important thing,” McCaughey said, “is that doctors
and nurses are not ready for the challenge of using this personal protective
equipment even if you see them with the helmet, the respirator, the full
suits, as the CDC said on the call today, even all that equipment is not enough
to guarantee the safety of health care workers because it is so perilous to put
it on and particularly to remove it once it’s become contaminated.”
McCaughey said many of those on the call were “daunted by the
expectations, the separate laboratory next to the isolated patients, all kinds
of — all kinds of adjustments, where to put the waste. Many states won’t even
let you dispose of this waste from such a toxic disease.”
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