Health officials in Dallas reach out to people at risk of Ebola exposure
DALLAS – More than a week after a Liberian man fell ill with Ebola and four days after he was placed in isolation at a hospital in Dallas, the apartment where he was staying with four other people had not been cleaned and the sheets and dirty towels he used while sick remained in the home, health officials acknowledged Thursday.
Even as the authorities were reaching out to at least 80 people who may have had contact – either directly or indirectly – with the patient, Thomas E. Duncan, while he was contagious, they were scrambling to find medical workers to safely clean the apartment.
The four family members who are living there are among a handful who have been directed by the authorities to remain in isolation. Texas health officials hand-delivered orders to residents of the apartment requiring them not to leave their home and not to allow any visitors inside until their roughly three-week incubation periods have passed.
The orders – known as communicable disease control orders – are permitted under the state’s health code. Violations could result in either criminal prosecution or civil court proceedings.
The woman who was hosting Duncan told CNN that she had been with him the first time he sought treatment at the hospital and that she had twice told workers there he had been in Liberia. Still they sent him back with only some antibiotics to the apartment, where the woman was staying with one of her children and two nephews.
Over the next two days, Duncan began sweating profusely and had diarrhea. His sweaty sheets were still on the bed on Thursday morning, the woman said.
The woman, whom CNN did not identify by name, said she had no symptoms of the disease.
The authorities would not go into detail about how or where the people they are reaching out to might have come into contact with Duncan. A spokeswoman for the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department, Erikka Neroes, said the initial list of 12-18 people thought to have direct contact with Duncan had been expanded to people who had either direct or secondary contact.
“It’s a constant process of interviews and locating as many contacts as are out there,” she said. “We expect daily that there could be more people added.”