US health officials were monitoring 50 people for Ebola exposure, 10 of whom are at “high risk” of the disease after close contact with the first diagnosed American patient.
United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified 10 people who had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, America’s first diagnosed case of Ebola.
CDC made contact with about 100 people that had possible contact with Duncan, and narrowed to 50 the list of people it needs to monitor daily.
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The agency will continue to monitor all 50 of them for the full 21-day incubation period of the virus and see if they develop symptoms such as fever, aches, vomiting or diarrhoea. The CDC said none of the people under observation are currently sick. Late on Friday, four family members related to the Dallas Ebola patient were removed from their apartment, according to City of Dallas spokesperson Sana Syed.
Cleanup effort is still ongoing. The family members are asymptomatic. Daily monitoring includes a temperature reading twice a day. The CDC has 10 disease control experts on the ground in Dallas in response to Duncan’s Ebola diagnosis, confirmed on Tuesday.
Texas Commissioner of Health David Lakey would not release a specific numeric breakdown of the individuals, other than saying three of the 50 individuals are EMT workers.
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Some of the individuals are those who didn’t have face to face contact with Duncan, but handled his blood for lab work at the hospital.
The others are people who had contact with Duncan in the community.
The health care workers classified as “high risk” have been furloughed from work with pay.
The Ebola outbreak has killed more than 3,400 people, mostly in Africa, the World Health Organisation has said.