Dallas is now ground zero for Ebola in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Tuesday that Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has quarantined the first case ever diagnosed on American soil.
Time for panic? Absolutely not. This is a time to stay informed and follow the instructions of health professionals so they can ensure that the virus doesn’t spread. Anyone who might have come in contact with the afflicted patient is already being identified and contacted by the CDC.
Officials say the general public is not at risk, nor were passengers who were on the flight that the patient took from Liberia on Sept. 19, arriving in Dallas on Sept. 20. The patient was not contagious at the time, doctors say.
Ebola becomes contagious only when the patient begins showing symptoms such as a fever, pain or vomiting, which did not develop in this case until several days after the patient arrived in Dallas to visit family members here, says Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC.
We would not wish this deadly virus on any country, but no nation in the world is better equipped to respond faster and with greater medical expertise than ours. The chances of Ebola spreading here in the way that it has spread throughout Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea are infinitesimally small.
Those countries rank among the poorest in the world, with open sewers and abysmal sanitary conditions. They lack modern health care systems; minimal precautions were taken to prevent contact with infected patients. Many West Africans follow cultural traditions, such as washing bodies by hand before burial, that dramatically hastened Ebola’s spread.
The Dallas case involves a patient now in quarantine, with hospital personnel observing the strictest precautions. “We’re stopping it in its tracks,” Frieden insists.
That said, there are good reasons to question why this patient wasn’t isolated sooner. He apparently sought medical care Friday with signs of a fever but was treated with antibiotics and sent home. He was not admitted and put into isolation until Sunday. Granted, the initial symptoms from Ebola are common; however, the patient’s travel history — the fact that he had arrived from Liberia only days before — should have raised giant red flags for all involved.
Let’s leave those concerns for another day.
We live in a highly educated, literate, news-conscious city that, by now, is thoroughly aware of the dangers posed by Ebola. We have a first-rate health care system that has been meeting for weeks to prepare for just such an event. We should remain personally vigilant but confident in the experts.
It’s worth noting that after one Ebola patient flew to Lagos, Nigeria, the disease spread to 20 other people there. Seven people died, but the disease was stopped cold. Trust that, here in Dallas, the best medical professionals in the world are on top of this. No one appreciates the stakes more than they.
