Hazardous material cleaners arrives at the apartment complex in Dallas, Friday, on Oct. 3, 2014, where Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who traveled from Liberia to Dallas stayed last week.
DALLAS — The lone U.S. Ebola patient is in critical condition, according to the Dallas hospital that has been treating him.
Candace White, a spokesperson for Texas Health Resources, which operates Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas where Thomas Eric Duncan is being treated, issued a six-word news release on Saturday saying, “Mr. Duncan is in critical condition.”
White provided no further details about his condition, and did not immediately respond to emails and phone calls. The hospital previously said Duncan was being kept in isolation, and that his condition was serious, but stable.
Duncan traveled from disease-ravaged Liberia to Dallas last month before he began showing symptoms of the disease. He was treated and released from the hospital before returning two days later in an ambulance. Duncan was later diagnosed with Ebola.
Health officials said Saturday that they are currently monitoring about 50 people who may have had contact with Duncan, including nine who are believed to be at a higher risk, for Ebola symptoms. So far, none have shown symptoms. Among those being monitored are people who rode in the ambulance that transported Duncan back to the hospital before his diagnosis, according to Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
On Friday, a hazardous-materials crew decontaminated the Dallas apartment where Duncan was staying when he got sick during his visit. The family who lived there was moved to a private home in a gated community, where they are being carefully monitored. The city had encountered trouble finding a place that would take in Louise Troh, originally from Liberia, her 13-year-old son and two nephews.
“No one wants this family,” said Sana Syed, a Dallas city spokesperson.
The decontamination team collected bed sheets, towels and a mattress used by Duncan before he was hospitalized, as well as a suitcase and other personal items of his, officials said. The materials were sealed in industrial barrels that were to be stored in trucks until they can be hauled away for permanent disposal.
The first American Ebola diagnosis has raised concerns over whether the disease that has killed more than 3,400 people in West Africa could spread in the U.S. Federal health officials say they are confident they can keep it in check.
The virus that causes Ebola is not airborne, and can only be spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids — blood, sweat, vomit, feces, urine, saliva or semen — of an infected person who is showing symptoms.
Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20, and fell ill several days later. After an initial visit to the emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, he was sent home on Sept. 25, even though he told a nurse he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa. Duncan returned to the hospital on Sept. 28, and has been kept in isolation ever since.
The hospital issued a news release late Friday saying that the doctor who initially treated and released did have access to Duncan’s travel history, after all. It said Thursday that a flaw in the electronic health-records systems led to separate physician and nursing workflows, and that Duncan’s travel history hadn’t been available to that doctor.
“There was no flaw in the EHR in the way the physician and nursing portions interacted related to this event,” the hospital’s Friday statement said.
On Saturday, a plane at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey was sealed over fears that a passenger on board was carrying Ebola.
Additional reporting by Mashable