Denton County commissioners received some positive news on the Ebola front Tuesday.
Matt Richardson, director of the Denton County Health Department, and Jody Gonzalez, emergency services director, made a joint presentation to commissioners about monitoring for the virus and preparations emergency officials have made in case anything happens.
“Nov. 5 will end monitoring in Denton County, provided there are no more cases,” Richardson told commissioners, referring to the 21-day timeline that covers the potential window of incubation for the virus.
Currently, 21 Denton County residents are being monitored following contacts with people who may have been around those who were found to have the Ebola virus.
Richardson continued to tout his approach of fighting fear with facts to dispel rumors, assumptions and innuendo about the virus, how it spreads and people who are being monitored by the health department.
Commissioners pressed Richardson about medical information about those 21 people being withheld from 911 dispatchers.
Richardson said some of those being monitored are health care workers employed by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where Thomas Duncan, the first patient in the U.S. diagnosed with Ebola, was treated.
He died Oct. 8, and since then two nurses at the hospital have been diagnosed with the virus.
One of them, Amber Vinson, was diagnosed after returning on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas on Oct. 13. The remaining number of residents being monitored were contacts of passengers on that flight.
“One of the municipalities in Precinct 1 was not happy about how the information was shared,” Commissioner Hugh Coleman said Tuesday afternoon.
“To me I don’t think it was unreasonable. If you hide stuff, people think there is a problem.
“It’s good public policy to let everyone know what is going on. It creates more trust when we fully inform everyone.”
Coleman said he understood not disclosing people’s identities and other information publicly, but those who might be responding to them for emergency reasons need to know what is going on.
Richardson said the health department does not share names or contact information of people being monitored.
“We don’t do that in any other communicable disease case,” he said.
“After consultation with the state health department and the [county district attorney’s office], we have [learned] the law prevents us.”
County Judge Mary Horn said late Tuesday that she was satisfied with Richardson’s responses to the concerns raised.
“It’s important to remember the science. [The virus] is not spread by contact with a person who is a contact,” she said. “And I have confidence our first responders, especially after all the work [Richardson] and [Gonzalez] have done to communicate and coordinate with all of our first responders — they are even more prepared now than they were in the past and know how to handle these situations. The last thing we want to do is spread any unnecessary panic.”
Commissioners were also briefed on the county’s infectious disease control policy, which was enacted Friday.
The policy utilizes a task force approach to handling the response to any case or suspected case of Ebola with streamlined protocol that covers general treatment and transfer of patients within a health care facility, decontamination of the vehicle used in transport, personal protective equipment, decontamination, safety at the scene and infection control measures.
“It’s more or less putting all agencies in the county on the same playbook,” Gonzalez told the court. “We have to have a similar plan for infectious control policy to utilize the task force approach so we all understand what each of us are doing, regardless of what agency patch you have on your shoulder.”
BJ LEWIS can be reached at 940-566-6875 and via Twitter @BjLewisDRC.
