The
Dallas Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan had come into contact with as many as
80 people, according to Texas health officials, NBC News reports. This figure
is significantly higher than initially thought.
Earlier reports had stated that Mr Duncan, the Liberian
who brought Ebola into the U.S. initially went to a Dallas emergency room last
week but was sent home, despite telling a nurse that he had been in
disease-ravaged West Africa, the hospital said Wednesday in a disclosure that
showed how easily an infection could be missed.
The decision by Texas
Health Presbyterian Hospital to release the patient, who had recently arrived
from Liberia, could have put others at risk of exposure to Ebola before the man
went back to the ER a couple of days later, when his condition worsened.
A day after the
diagnosis was confirmed, a nine-member team of federal health officials was
tracking anyone who had close contact with him after he fell ill on Sept. 24.
The group of 12 to 18 people included three members of the ambulance crew that
took the man to the hospital and a handful of schoolchildren.
They will be checked
every day for 21 days, the disease's incubation period.
"That's how we're
going to break the chain of transmission, and that's where our focus has to
be," Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, told The Associated Press Wednesday.
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