Texas Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Kyle Janek (HHSC)
Texans enjoy strong public health protections and should not panic over the Ebola patient being treated at a Dallas hospital, state health and welfare czar Kyle Janek said Tuesday.
While hospitals and public health departments are vulnerable to human error, they have robust arrangements for preventing outbreaks, Janek told the Texas Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee.
“The people of the state of Texas should be confident of our ability to get our arms around this and other infectious disease,” he said. Janek cite the state’s experience at containing such illnesses as West Nile virus, hantavirus, tuberculosis and measles.
“Disease containment … is something we do every day,” he said.
Dallas pulmonologist Gary Weinstein, one of the doctors treating the Ebola-infected patient, said Thomas Eric Duncan is still battling for his life.
“He remains critically ill and we ask for your thoughts and prayers for Mr. Duncan and his family,” said Weinstein, the critical care chief at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas Hospital.
“He has needs that we have never seen before.”
After Presbyterian Dallas shares information with other health care providers about its experiences treating Duncan, “there will be lots of lessons learned,” Weinstein said.
Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Galveston, asked Weinstein to discuss Duncan’s first trip to the Dallas hospital. On that visit, the Liberian native was sent away, despite showing some Ebola-like symptoms and telling a hospital staffer he had traveled from Africa.
Weinstein said he couldn’t talk about initial treatment decisions.
“Events preceding his first admission are being thoroughly reviewed,” he said.
Janek, an anesthesiologist and former state lawmaker, stressed that Ebola can’t be spread unless an infected person is showing symptoms. It also can’t be spread through the air, he noted.
On Monday, Janek said he met with a visiting global health official who recently had been in Sierra Leone. It is one of three West African countries reeling from an Ebola outbreak.
“I had no compunction, zero, at shaking his hand,” Janek recalled.
Until infected people exhibit symptoms, “they are not at risk of spreading that virus to others — and that is only through direct contact … with bodily fluids,” he said.
Janek, who was appointed by Republican Gov. Rick Perry, treaded carefully when former GOP Senate colleagues asked him about possible federal interventions.
Sen. Joan Huffman speaks to Senate colleagues during the final weekend of last year's session. (Louis DeLuca/Staff photographer)
Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, wondered if Americans would “feel a little safer” if the federal government temporarily halted issuing any travel visas to visitors from affected areas in West Africa.
“I’m worried about the future and the next person,” she said.
Janek emulated his boss, Perry, who has declined to endorse some fellow Republicans’ call for shutting down air travel to and from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Janek spoke of the complexity of global air travel.
“I realize I’m dodging a very specific question but that’s because I really don’t know” if a visa ban would enhance Texans’ safety, Janek said.
There are no direct flights by U.S. carriers from Sierra Leone, Guinea or Liberia. The vast majority of travelers from Africa to the U.S. fly through hub cities in Europe. Duncan flew from his native country to Brussels, where he boarded a flight to Washington Dulles International Airport, changed planes and continued on to Dallas.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, asked if thermal imaging machines should be set up at airports.
“It would catch people with temperatures, for whatever reason,” she explained.
Janek said he presumes federal aviation, health and security officials would have to make a decision on that. When Nelson asked if he will request more money in next year’s legislative session to buy high-tech equipment that might help in public health and safety crises, Janek demurred.
“The best surveillance for infectious disease is the low-tech stuff,” he said. “It’s the routine stuff, handwashing, making sure we use soap and water” and careful note-taking by doctors and nurses when they interview patients, he said.
Sen. Charles Schwertner, a Georgetown Republican and physician who heads the Senate panel, said a thorough review of what happened in Dallas will help the state assess its ability to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease.
Schwertner said Texas has a highly decentralized system of public health. While the set-up has the benefit of involving local officials, a recent Sunset Advisory Commission report showed that the state health department isn’t in close contact with local agencies it doesn’t fund. And fewer than half of the local departments received state funds last year.
Schwertner said lawmakers will study whether the state “could improve the chain of command.”