The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case of Ebola diagnosed on US soil in a press conference on Tuesday.
What We Know
1. The male patient is at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Texas.
2. He contracted Ebola in Liberia, though it is unclear exactly how.
3. He is currently in intensive care.
4. He left Liberia on September 19, arrived in the US on September 20, and first developed symptoms on September 24. Ebola cannot be spread when someone is asymptomatic.
5. He first sought care on September 26 and was admitted to the hospital on September 28.
6. He was in Dallas to visit family.
7. There are currently no other suspected cases. Additional cases are possible, though the CDC is confident that "it will not spread widely in this country."
8. The CDC and local health officials are tracking down all of the patients' contacts, which they classify as only "a handful," and monitoring them for symptoms.
The Full Story
The Ebola patient, who was in isolation in Dallas on Tuesday (as first reported by the local ABC affiliate, WFAA), contracted Ebola in Liberia, though the circumstances of that transmission are unknown. It seems the patient was not involved in fighting Ebola on the ground.
The patient is currently in intensive care in Dallas, and the hospital is in conversation with the family about the possible use of experimental treatments.
"I have no doubt that we will control this case of Ebola so that it does not spread widely in this country... we will stop Ebola in its tracks," said CDC director Thomas Frieden. Still, a close contact of the patient, like a family member, could develop the disease, he added, and there could be additional imported cases. "As long as the outbreak continues in Africa, we need to be on our guard."
The patient left Liberia on September 19 and arrived in the US on September 20 with no symptoms. "We think there is zero risk of transmission on the flight," Frieden said, since the virus is not contagious before patients are visibly ill.
While in Dallas, the patient was visiting family who live there. The patient began to develop symptoms on September 24, first sought care on September 26, and was admitted to the hospital on September 28. A Texas state laboratory confirmed that the patient had Ebola on Tuesday afternoon, and that result was later confirmed by the CDC.
"The initial symptoms of Ebola are non-specific," Frieden said, explaining why the patient was not admitted to a hospital after first seeking care. He added that the number of exposures the patient had while symptomatic was only "a handful," primarily family members and a small number of others. The CDC and local health officials are tracking down all possible contacts so they can be monitored and isolated if they develop a fever.
Currently, "there are no other suspected cases, though we are closely monitoring the situation," said David Lakey, the Commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services.
While this is the first case of Ebola unknowingly imported to the US, there have been five previous cases of viral hemorrhagic fevers, diseases in the same family as Ebola, and none of those led to an outbreak.
While the ongoing epidemic in West Africa made an eventual imported Ebola case likely, the risk of an actual outbreak in the US is very low since our healthcare system is much more advanced than the fragile healthcare systems of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. Ebola is spread via bodily fluids, so it is not nearly as contagious as respiratory viruses like the flu or SARS.
"Only someone sick with Ebola can spread the disease," Frieden said on Tuesday.
American aid workers who have contracted Ebola abroad have been brought to the US for treatment, but the case announced today is the first unknowingly imported into the US.
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has infected 6,574 people and killed more than 3,000, making it far larger than all previous Ebola outbreaks combined. The hardest-hit countries are Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. There were also cases in Nigeria and Senegal, but those countries appear to have contained the disease's spread, the CDC announced on Tuesday. More than 900 contacts were monitored in Nigeria, and more than 60 contacts were monitored in Senegal, Frieden said.
Reports of a possible case in Dallas first surfaced on Monday night, when Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas released a statement confirming it had "admitted a patient into strict isolation" and would be testing that patient for Ebola, with results anticipated on Tuesday.
