The Ebola patient in a Texas isolation unit has become so weak that he can no longer talk to his family on the phone, his nephew told ABC News.
Thomas Eric Duncan, who is from Liberia, has been confined to an isolation unit at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas since he arrived in an ambulance on Sunday.
The family had said earlier in the week they spoke with Duncan by phone and prayed with him on the phone, but that is no longer possible, Duncan's nephew Joe Weeks told ABC News.
"At first we were able to talk to him on the phone, but now he is just too sick to speak," Weeks said.
Weeks lives in Kannapolis, N.C., along with Duncan's sister and 87-year-old mother. The mother and sister may travel to Dallas soon, Weeks said.
A cleaning crew is expected to arrive today at the Ivy Apartments in Dallas where Duncan had been staying when he got sick from the Ebola virus. The crew was turned away on Thursday, but are expected to be admitted today.
The cleaning crew is tasked with disinfecting all of the surfaces that Duncan could have touched, Dallas Judge Clay Jenkins said Thursday. The man’s clothes and sheets have been “bagged,” Jenkins said. Additionally, food has been delivered to the apartment for Duncan’s relatives.
Weeks is concerned that the apartment has not yet been sanitized despite having four people confined to the apartment by a judge's order until they determined to not be infected with Ebola, which can take as long as 21 to incubate. Among the people in the apartment are a teenage boy and woman named Louise Troh, who traveled from Liberia with Duncan.
“The house that he lived in has not been cleaned or disinfected. You still have four more people in there, that lived in that house and were allowed to leave and go shopping, go do other things that normal people would do,” Weeks said.
First Ebola Case in U.S., But CDC Vows 'We Will Stop It Here'
What You Need to Know About the Ebola Virus
Face-to-Face With Patients in the Ebola Ward
Thomas R. Frieden, the Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told ABC News today the Ebola diagnosis offers new challenges for authorities.
“It’s the first time we’re having Ebola in this country and the challenges are real in terms of what do you do with the waste, how do you move it, how do you dispose of it and we want to make sure that everything is done correctly,” Frieden said. “I’m confident that will get sorted out today.”
The initial handling of Duncan's case has been the subject of controversy. Duncan first visited the hospital last Thursday, Sept. 25, but was allowed to leave the hospital despite telling a nurse he had come from West Africa. Duncan returned to the hospital by ambulance on Sunday.
The hospital said in a statement Thursday that the physician and the nurses followed protocol, but his travel history didn't automatically appear in the physician's standard workflow.
Weeks also had concerns that the hospital wasn't aware that Duncan may have been infected with Ebola. Weeks said that he called the hospital to report his concerns about Duncan’s condition – and when he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he called officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health, at which point Duncan was put in isolation.
“They had him in the ER, like any other patient, and I didn’t think that was the right procedure,” Weeks said.
“I don’t know how long it was going to take, but I wasn’t trying to wait to see how long it was going to take, so I pre-empted and called CDC and reported that there might be a possible Ebola case in Texas. But the hospital was not doing what it needed to do at that time,” he said.
0 comments:
Post a Comment