WASHINGTON—Members of a US House subcommittee sharply criticized national and Dallas medical officials on Thursday for errors in the Ebola crisis that they say have eroded public trust in the hospital system.
Fumbles by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and by Texas Health Resources Presbyterian Hospital Dallas have demolished CDC assurances that any hospital in America could effectively deal with an Ebola case, said Rep. Tim Murphy, Republican-Pennsylvania, the subcommittee chairman.
“CDC and our public-health system are in the middle of a fire. Job One is to put it out completely,” Murphy said.
The subcommittee’s top Democrat, Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, echoed the concerns.
“It would be an understatement to say that the response to the first US-based patient with Ebola has been mismanaged, causing risk to scores of additional people,” she said.
The questions on Capitol Hill about Presbyterian—and about US hospitals in general—arose as Nina Pham, a Presbyterian nurse infected with the Ebola virus, was moved from Presbyterian to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) clinic in Bethesda, Maryland.
Pham, 26, was among those who cared for Thomas Eric Duncan of Liberia, who died of Ebola in the Dallas hospital on October 8.
Amber Vinson, 29, a second Presbyterian nurse diagnosed with the disease, was moved earlier to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, which has special isolation units and has treated three Americans who contracted Ebola in Africa while on aid missions.
The fact that two nurses at Presbyterian contracted the disease while treating an Ebola victim proves that “the frightening truth is that we cannot guarantee the safety of our health-care workers on the front lines,” said Rep. Michael Burgess, Republican-Texas, a physician.
Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a part of the NIH, testified before the committee in Washington. Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer at Presbyterian, spoke from Texas. Frieden faced some of the toughest questions.
He was pressed to explain whether Vinson should have been allowed to travel by commercial airliner to visit family in Ohio after she was identified as having been one of Duncan’s caregivers.
That would have been fine, Frieden said, had she worn proper protective gear while treating Duncan. If she hadn’t, she shouldn’t have traveled, he said.
More than 70 are Presbyterian health-care workers who had contact with Duncan, sometimes without proper protective clothing, according to nurses at the hospital. (Varga disputed the nurses’ claim about inadequate protective gear.)
Other developments
The death toll from Ebola will rise this week to more than 4,500 people from the 9,000 infected and the outbreak is still out of control in three West African nations.
Dr. Isabelle Nuttall, director of the World Health Organization’s global capacities, alert and response, said new numbers show the outbreak is still hitting health workers hard despite precautions—with 427 medical workers infected and 236 dead—mainly because Ebola victims are most contagious around the time they die.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that a trust fund he launched to provide fast and flexible funding for the fight against Ebola has only $100,000 in the bank. UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the trust fund is part of a nearly $1-billion UN appeal for humanitarian needs in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three countries hardest-hit by the deadly virus.
House Republicans demanded a travel ban from Ebola-ravaged West Africa on Thursday, calling it the only sure way to protect Americans from the virus’s deadly reach. Administration officials resisted, as anxiety over the disease raced through the country and rattled the White House and Congress.
Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday became the latest countries in the Western Hemisphere to restrict travelers from West African nations struggling with an epidemic of the Ebola virus.
The announcements came a day after Colombia and Saint Lucia ordered similar prohibitions.
Authorities in Jamaica imposed an immediate entry ban on anyone who has been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone within four weeks.
Frieden acknowledged that Vinson called the CDC before her return flight to Dallas, said she had a minor fever, and asked whether she could travel.
“My understanding is she reported no symptoms to us,” he told the committee.
But a day earlier, Frieden said that since Vinson had a fever, she shouldn’t have flown.
A series of bad decisions, beginning with Presbyterian’s failure to admit Duncan when he showed up at the emergency room with a high fever and severe pain, has left hundreds of people with potential exposure to the deadly virus.
Many more were either on the Frontier Airlines flight that Vinson took from Cleveland to Dallas or were on subsequent flights before the aircraft was taken out of service.
Concerns about passengers’ exposure have spread nationwide, including in North Texas.
On Thursday Rockwall County announced that four residents who were on Monday’s flight were being monitored by the state health department and the CDC. Another county resident, a Presbyterian health-care worker, is also being monitored.
Despite her slight fever, health officials said, the chance that Vinson spread Ebola to other passengers was very small.
Still, school districts in Ohio and Texas contacted parents after learning that some of their students had been passengers on the plane or were the children of passengers. Some schools were closed so they could be disinfected. MCT and AP