Seventy-six employees of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, including doctors and nurses, are being monitored daily for possible exposure to the first Ebola patient while he was being treated, a top federal official said Tuesday.
The health-care workers were treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the Nigerian man who became the nation's first person diagnosed with the deadly virus. He died last Wednesday. Already, one of his caregivers, a critical care nurse, has been infected and is undergoing treatment for the disease.
'All will be monitored for fever and symptoms on a daily basis,' Dr. Tom Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a national media briefing Tuesday afternoon.
It was not clear if these employees will continue to work at Presbyterian throughout the 21-day incubation period, which ends Oct. 29, three weeks after Duncan died.
Frieden said the CDC also has decided it will send ' an immediate response team' to assist in any confirmed Ebola cases around the country in the future. Such a team would include not only epidemiologist, who would help trace any contacts of future Ebola victims but experts in infection control and the treatment of the disease, which has been fatal in most cases.
The federal agency sent a team to Dallas after Duncan's Sept. 30 diagnosis, but called in more Ebola experts after the nurse, Nina Pham, was diagnosed Sunday with the disease. TOP PICKS
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