Dallas Exporting New Ebola Cases to Biocontainment Units
By Harry R. Weber, Caroline Chen and John Lauerman
Bloomberg.com
Oct 19, 2014
New Ebola patients in Dallas will be transferred to three top infectious-disease centers in the U.S., a Texas official said yesterday.
The new treatment strategy follows national scrutiny of cases at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, a Dallas facility that has handled three Ebola patients and said it made mistakes in its treatment of Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Oct. 8. Two nurses at the hospital who contracted Ebola from him have already been transferred, each to one of the top national centers that specialize in treating contagions.
“We’re intaking and sending away from Presbyterian now with an idea that Ebola-positive care will be somewhere else,” said Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s top executive, at a news briefing yesterday. Spokesmen for the hospital didn’t return e-mails and phone calls seeking comment.
Dallas’s plans may be a harbinger of a new national policy on handling patients with the deadly virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is based in Atlanta, is working with Texas and various hospitals to coordinate a patient placement plan, said Dave Daigle, an agency spokesman, by telephone.
Jenkins said he wanted the three isolation rooms at Presbyterian Hospital to have “plenty of room” for patients who may be under observation for possible Ebola symptoms.
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