The fifth American to contract Ebola in west Africa arrived in Omaha on Monday morning, as the first patient diagnosed with the disease in the US fights for his life in Dallas.
A specially equipped plane carrying Ashoka Mukpo, an American journalist who contracted Ebola while covering the outbreak in Liberia, landed at Eppley airfield in Omaha. Mukpo was then taken by ambulance to the Nebraska Medical Center, where he will be treated in a biomedical isolation unit – the largest in the country.
Mukpo was working in Liberia as a freelance cameraman for NBC News when he tested positive for Ebola last week. As a precautionary measure, the NBC news crew he was working with will remain in isolation for 21 days, the incubation period for the disease. The quarantined teamincludes NBC News chief medical editor Dr Nancy Snyderman.
Meanwhile in Dallas, Thomas Eric Duncan’s condition worsened over the weekend, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Thomas Frieden.
Duncan, from Liberia, is in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, which announced on Saturday that his condition had changed from serious to critical. He was diagnosed last Tuesday and placed immediately in isolation. However, days prior, he went to the hospital complaining of symptoms similar to Ebola, and told the on-duty nurse that he had traveled from Liberia. This information was not relayed to the prescribing doctor, who sent the man home with a course of antibiotics.
The misstep taken by the hospital prompted the CDC to update its guidelines for hospitals receiving patients who are displaying symptoms of Ebola, which can include high fever, diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding.
Health officials in Dallas are currently monitoring 50 people whom they believe may have come into contact with Duncan before he was isolated, the majority of whom are of very low concern. Nine people are considered “high risk”, among them his girlfriend and her family who lived in the apartment where he stayed. The family was moved to a donated residence over the weekend where they will remain under quarantine for the duration of the 21-day incubation period. None of the 50 individuals under observation have displayed any symptoms.
So far, five Americans diagnosed with Ebola in west Africa have been repatriated for treatment including three missionaries, a World Health Organization doctor and, most recently, the NBC News freelance cameraman. The three missionaries have recovered, and the WHO doctor is still being cared for at a US National Institutes of Health facility in Maryland.
Mukpo will be treated at the same hospital as Dr Rick Sacra, 51, a Boston obstetrician and Ebola survivor who contracted the disease while treating patients as a medical missionary at a hospital in Liberia. At the hospital, Sacra was treated with an experimental drug called TKM-Ebola, which is made by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp. He also received a “convalescent serum” made of the antibodies taken from the blood of fellow missionary Dr Kent Brantly, the first-ever Ebola patient treated in the US.
When a patient recovers from Ebola, that person develops antibodies that last for at 10 years, according to the CDC. It’s not yet known if those who recover develop a lifetime immunity from the disease or if it’s possible for them to become infected with a different strain of Ebola. Some health officials believe the blood of survivors may help Ebola stricken patients fight the disease.
Brantly and Nancy Writebol, who worked for the same aid group in Liberia, were treated together at Emory University hospital in Atlanta where they received doses of the untested, experimental drug ZMapp, which has since been depleted.
Drug makers and pharmaceutical companies are doing their best to ramp up production of these drugs; and health agencies have pledged to fast-track the testing process. But even so, it could take months before new doses are available for Ebola sufferers. There are also multiple vaccines in trial phases.
“The drug pipeline is going to be slow, I’m afraid,” CDC director Thomas Frieden told NBC’s Meet the Press. “The most promising drug, ZMapp, there’s no more of it, and it’s hard to make, it takes months to make just a bit.”
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