Using military and new protocols, U.S. ramps up Ebola response

DALLAS (Reuters) - The United States is issuing new protocols for health workers treating Ebola patients and a rapid-response military medical team prepared to start training, even as 43 people being monitored for the virus were declared risk free.

The government's new guidelines, which a top health official said could come out as soon as Monday, were expected to tell health workers to cover skin and hair completely when dealing with patients who have the virus that has killed more than 4,500 in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. There have been just three cases diagnosed inside the United States, a Liberian man who died in Dallas, Texas, on Oct. 8 and two nurses who treated him and are now themselves patients.

The old guidelines, based on World Health Organization protocols, said workers should wear masks but allowed some skin exposure. The virus is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of infected people and it is not airborne.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health infectious diseases unit, said the two nurses "did not do anything wrong. Period," and that new protocols would come out within hours to a day.

"The way that was written was a risk for the nurses," Fauci told a "town hall" meeting sponsored by Washington news radio station WTOP. "They went by the protocol. They got infected.?

In Canada, unionized nurses said they were concerned that the country's public health agency plan for Ebola preparedness does not go far enough.

Later this week, 30 military medical personnel are due to begin training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, to move quickly to help deal with any possible case of Ebola in the United States, military officials said. They include 20 critical care nurses, five infectious disease doctors, and five trainers with "great knowledge" of infectious disease protocol, said Major Beth Smith, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The man newly appointed by President Barack Obama to coordinate the response to Ebola inside the country, lawyer Ron Klain, will start work on Wednesday. His mandate is to reduce fears and work on improving federal coordination with states to control the spread of the virus. Klain was invited to testify at a House of Representatives oversight hearing on Friday, but he will not attend.

HUNDREDS MONITORED FOR SYMPTOMS

More than 260 people in Texas and Ohio were still being monitored for symptoms, officials said.

A patient who was admitted to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Sept. 9 after being infected in West Africa was released on Sunday, the hospital said in a statement on Monday. The patient asked not to be identified but will make a statement later, Emory said.

Also Monday, the Nebraska Medical Center treating an American freelance journalist diagnosed in Liberia said he is doing "quite well" and that depending on test results he could be discharged in days.

In Texas, 43 people who had contact with Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States in late September, were cleared of twice-daily monitoring after showing no symptoms during a 21-day incubation period.

The Texas health department said they included four people who shared an apartment with Duncan and had been in quarantine. It said 120 people in Texas were still being monitored.

"There's zero risk that any of those people who have been marked off the list have Ebola. They were in contact with a person who had Ebola and the time period for them to get Ebola has lapsed. It is over. They do not have Ebola," Judge Clay Jenkins, the top elected official in Dallas County, said at a news conference.

Shares of small biotech companies, medical equipment makers and drugmakers related to Ebola research and preparedness were down between 8 percent and 21 percent after the news.

At the Catholic Conference Center in Dallas where Duncan's fiancée Louise Troh and the other three people closest to Duncan had been in quarantine, Bishop Kevin Farrell said they were relieved the isolation period was over. "They felt like they were being persecuted," Farrell said.

Four of five Dallas school students who have been cleared by health authorities to resume regular activities following exposure to the virus returned to school on Monday, one day earlier than expected.

School district superintendent Mike Miles said that because the students "pose no health risk to any students or staff, we have no intent on sending them home. Their interest in getting back into school is encouraging."

Three people were still in quarantine in Ohio, among 142 under different levels of monitoring, the state health department said. The three in quarantine had direct skin contact with a nurse who visited the state after being infected while treating Duncan. She and the other infected nurse are being treated for the disease.

The United States and some European governments are checking selected airports for passengers travelling from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, the three West African countries worst hit by Ebola.

In a similar move on Monday, Carnival Cruise Lines said passengers will be asked to fill out a questionnaire on whether or not they have experienced symptoms of fever or vomiting and if they have recently traveled to West Africa or had contact with someone known or suspected to have Ebola.

One Carnival cruise was denied docking by Belize and Mexico last week because a Texas hospital lab worker on board might have come in contact with test samples from Duncan, who died on Oct. 8. The worker has tested negative for the virus.

(Additional reporting by Colleen Jenkins in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Karen Brooks and Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, Jim Forsyth in San Antonio, David Morgan, Susan Heavey and Doina Chiacu in Washington and David Bailey; Writing by Jim Loney and Grant McCool; Editing by Bernadette Baum, Howard Goller, Toni Reinhold)

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