WASHINGTON — Federal authorities conceded Friday that missteps marred the handling of America’s first Ebola case in Dallas but expressed confidence in efforts to keep the deadly virus from spreading.
Repeatedly, in a news briefing aimed at calming fears, officials said the nation has appropriate health measures in place and the disease that has exploded into an epidemic in West Africa does not pose a broad threat here.
“Our health care infrastructure in the United States is well-equipped to stop Ebola in its tracks,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, infectious-diseases chief at the National Institutes of Health.
Still, scrutiny remains fierce over mistakes that have fanned the Ebola scare. A Liberian man visiting Dallas became sick, but Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital initially sent him home, only to see him return two days later and then be diagnosed with Ebola.
Now, about 50 people who had some type of exposure to Thomas Duncan are being monitored, including 10 considered to be at high risk.
Four of them were moved Friday from the northeast Dallas apartment they shared with Duncan. The county apologized Friday for its slow response, including delays in getting rid of the bedsheets, towels and other infectious items Duncan used there.
“There were things that did not go the way they should have in Dallas, but there are a lot of things that went right and are going right,” Fauci said at the White House.
“Although certainly it was rocky, to the perception of people and reality, but the fact is the reason I said there wouldn’t be an outbreak is because of what’s going on right now. So even though there were missteps there, there were good things that happened also.”
It was clear the arrival in Dallas of a virus that has killed more than 3,000 in Africa has commanded high-level attention. Among those briefing reporters: Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell and Lisa Monaco, President Barack Obama’s top homeland security adviser.
Monaco noted that the outbreak in Liberia and neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone has raged since March. During that time, tens of thousands of people have traveled to the United States from that region and until this week, no one had been diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S.
“We now have this isolated case in Texas,” she said, but that doesn’t mean it will afflict Americans at rates comparable to the outbreak in places ill-equipped to handle it.
Those countries have lacked the ability to isolate patients, offer rapid treatment, provide protective gear to health care providers and caregivers, and trace and quarantine people who’ve come in contact with the virus.
She did not announce any new initiatives inside the U.S. but noted that federal authorities for months have been providing guidance to state health officials, hospitals, doctors, airline pilots and customs agents.
The federal government sent health professionals another set of guidelines Thursday on how to treat and contain Ebola.
The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne and can only be spread through direct contact with bodily fluids — blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen — of an infected person who is showing symptoms.
“We cannot overcommunicate about this issue,” Burwell said.
In other developments Friday:
An unidentified patient who recently traveled to Nigeria was admitted to Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C., with Ebola-like symptoms, hospital officials said. By Friday evening, test results had not determined whether the patient would be the second confirmed case of Ebola diagnosed in the United States.
The U.S. is not considering a travel ban to prevent people from the hardest-hit West African countries from coming to the U.S. Efforts were instead are focused on identifying high-risk individuals before they leave the outbreak zone.
Texas health officials said 50 people, including health care workers and others who came into contact with Duncan, are now being monitored. That’s half as many as the state said it was tracking Thursday, and the list is expected to continue to shrink.
Public health officials are making twice-daily visits to each of them to check their temperature and look for symptoms of the virus, such as fever, diarrhea and abdominal pain.
For now, those being monitored can only nervously wait. The first signs of the illness often appear in eight to 10 days but can take as long as 21 days.
“There really isn’t anything that can be done to prevent Ebola from developing if infection has occurred,” said Beth Bell of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Duncan, who remains in isolation at the hospital, is in serious but stable condition. He came to Dallas to get married, his girlfriend has told her pastor.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he visited Duncan’s family Thursday night to apologize for the handling of their situation, including their being ordered to stay in the apartment to avoid contact with others.
Friday, he helped arrange to move them from The Ivy Apartments to an unidentified gated community.
“I want to see them treated as I would want my own family treated,” Jenkins said.
