CDC: Ebola Patient Pham “Clinically Stable” & “Extremely Helpful”
Jack Fink
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DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) – According to officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nurse Nina Pham is clinically stable after contracting the Ebola virus while caring for the first U.S. patient Thomas Eric Duncan.
The director of the CDC, Dr. Thomas Frieden said, “Our team lead in Texas has spoken with her on multiple occasions and she is extremely helpful.”
Pham’s family says she doesn’t know how she was infected and neither do health officials.
Duncan’s medical records obtained by the Associated Press show the hospital had 70 employees providing care for him. The records show hospital employees drew Thomas Duncan’s blood, put tubes down his throat, wiped up his diarrhea, analyzed his urine, and wiped saliva from his lips.
Now, the state is busy working around the clock to contact the health care workers.
Texas Health Services commissioner Dr. David Lakey said, “We’re bringing in the resources to do the contact investigation from many different levels of government to identify those individuals and contact them as quickly as possible.”
The CDC is also re-training health care workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas on how to properly put on and take off protective gear.
When it comes to how Pham, 26, contracted Ebola Dr. Frieden said their investigation is also considering another method. “We’re looking at what someone does when they come out of the isolation unit, possibly spraying them with a product that would kill the virus if there’s contamination.”
According to Frieden, health workers already follow those procedures with gloves, but now they are looking more broadly.
The CDC says no one else being monitored is showing symptoms of Ebola or a fever.
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