DALLAS -- The Centers for Disease Control, Dallas County and Texas Presbyterian Hospital are now monitoring about 125 people for signs of Ebola, but no one is showing symptoms of the deadly virus at this time.
The CDC is also establishing a response team, director Dr. Tom Frieden said on Tuesday. The group will be sent wherever a patient is diagnosed within hours.
Frieden told the media he wishes such a specialized team had been readily available when Thomas Eric Duncan became ill.
'We did send some expertise in infection control, but I think we could in retrospect, 20/20 hindsight, we could have sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands on with the hospital from day one about how exactly this should be managed,' he said. 'Ebola is unfamiliar, it's scary, and getting it right is really, really important because the stakes are so high.'
Locally, the CDC has doubled its response team, and trained professionals are looking at every step in health care workers' procedures so they can make necessary changes. Frieden says he hopes that learning more about Ebola will help put aside fears that health care workers have as they go into work.
Among the team in Dallas are two nurses from Emory Hospital in Atlanta, where two people, including Dr. Kent Brantly, were successfully treated for the Ebola virus earlier this year.
Dr. Frieden said a site manager has been placed on duty at all times in the isolation unit of Texas Presbyterian Hospital, where 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham is being treated, to oversee the safety equipment and protective gear being used by health care workers.
Pham was wearing gear when she treated Duncan, but it isn't clear how she contracted the virus.
'The nurse is in stable condition. I am thinking of her constantly and hoping for her steady recovery,' he said.
About 75 other health care workers came into contact with Duncan, and they are being monitored closely. Another 48 people who came into contact with Duncan outside of the hospital are still being monitored, but Frieden says they have passed two-thirds of the risk period for showing symptoms.
They are all healthy and Frieden says it's 'unlikely' they will get the virus.
As for Pham, she had contact with one other person. He is not showing any symptoms.
Dr. Frieden also said that the CDC wants every hospital in the nation to be screening for Ebola by asking patients where they have traveled to over the past month. Health care workers should be specifically looking for people who have traveled to West Africa.
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