Crew cleans Dallas apartment of Ebola patient's family
DALLAS — Dallas County officials confirmed Thursday that soiled bedding and other possibly contaminated items that belong to Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan have been placed in plastic bags inside the apartment where he was staying.
County officials say they had trouble finding a cleaning crew willing to sanitize the residence, but late Thursday night, a crew was seen entering the apartment.
"We've used them in HIV/AIDS situations where we needed to do a cleanup and other blood-borne illness cleanup," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. "They use appropriate disinfectants, and are appropriately licensed to do that."
Jenkins said that crew will also be responsible for proper disposal of the contaminated bags.
Dallas County health officials are now monitoring the family inside that apartment for any sign of illness at least twice a day. The monitoring includes taking their temperatures to check for fever.
Dr. Christopher Perkins said he examined the family personally Wednesday night. He wore gloves and took other precautions against exposure, but he did not wear a full suit of protective gear, as seen in Ebola wards in Africa.
"In regards to going out and monitoring them, I do not perceive a personal threat," Perkins said of going into the apartment.
Perkins and Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson hand-delivered a strict public order to prevent the potential spread of disease. The order legally requires the family to stay at home and not have any visitors without approval from the local or state health department until at least October 19.
The family living in a Dallas apartment where the first Ebola patient in the U.S. was staying is now under quarantine after one of the family's children went to school despite doctors' recommendations.
The health department had previously instructed the family to stay home, but the order was needed to ensure compliance. Dallas Independent School District confirmed that one of the schoolchildren ordered to stay home attended Tandy Middle School Wednesday morning, against health department requests.
A guard is now posted outside the residence, to insure compliance.
If someone else falls ill with a suspected case of Ebola, officials confirm they will likely be taken to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas by ambulance. Protocols have been put in place, though health officials declined to elaborate on the specifics of the protocols.
After it was revealed Duncan told a Texas Health Presbyterian nurse that he had been in Africa upon his initial trip to the hospital on Sept. 25 then released, the hospital issued a news release Thursday night explaining how that information was not given to doctors.
According to the release, the nurse asked Duncan if he had traveled out of the U.S. in the past four weeks, and he told that nurse he had been in Africa. The nurse entered that information into the nursing portion of Duncan's electronic medical record. However, the hospital found in their investigation of the incident that there was a flaw in the way the physician and nursing portions of their electronic health records interacted.
In their electronic records, physician and nursing workflows were kept separate, and the documentation of travel history was located only in the nursing workflow portion of the records. Since the flaw was discovered, the travel history documentation was relocated to a portion of the records that appears in both workflows, and has also been modified to specifically reference Ebola-endemic regions in Africa, hospital spokesman Wendell Watson said.
"We have made this change to increase the visibility and documentation of the travel question in order to alert all providers," Watson said. "We feel that this change will improve the early identification of patients who may be at risk for communicable diseases, including Ebola."
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention experts are already on hand at Texas Health Presbyterian, treating Duncan.
"Several of the folks on our team here have experience in Africa," said David Daigle of the CDC.
Daigle said his team will be divided between treatment and investigation of people who had contact with the patient.
So far, no one who's had contact with the Ebola patient has shown any signs of illness.