The emergency entrance to Texas Health Presbyterian hospital, Sunday, Oct. 12, 2014, in Dallas, Texas. Hospital officials have said they are no longer accepting new patients at this time after a healthcare worker, who was caring for Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan, tested positive for the disease in preliminary tests.
A Texas healthcare worker has tested positive for Ebola, marking the first time someone has contracted this strain of the illness within the United States.
The worker provided care to Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who fell ill after returning to the U.S. from West Africa and died last Wednesday. Preliminary tests were conducted by the Texas Department of State Health and confirmed on Sunday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention..
“At some point there was a breach in protocol, and that breach in protocol resulted in this infection,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, he said, the healthcare worker was not able to identify a particular moment when she may have contracted the disease. Proper protocol includes wearing a gown, gloves, mask and shield when providing care.
“The protocols work. We have decades of experience caring for patients with Ebola,” Frieden said, but “even a single, inadvertent innocent slip can result in contamination.”
The CDC is investigating how the workers took off their gear, because removing it incorrectly can lead to contamination. Frieden called proper removal of protective equipment “critically important and not easy to do right.”
He said the worker had close contact with Duncan while treating him multiple times after he was diagnosed, and that all those who treated him are now considered to be potentially exposed.
When asked why a healthcare worker taking precautions against contamination contracted the disease, while individuals who had direct contact with Duncan have not, Frieden said infection becomes more likely as patients show more symptoms.
“As someone gets sicker, they get more infectious also,” he said.
Healthcare workers are therefore most likely to be in contact with patients when they are the most contagious.
Frieden said that there are 48 people under observation who had contact with Duncan up to Sept. 28. The healthcare workers who treated him after that date are not included in that number, and the CDC is looking into the potential number of hospital staff who could have been exposed.
There is no risk of spread outside that circle, according to Frieden.
“Unfortunately it is possible in the coming days that we will see additional cases of Ebola,” Frieden said. “This is because the healthcare workers who cared for this individual may have had a breach of the same nature [of the nurse].”
Dr. Daniel Varga, of Texas Health Resources, said the family of the worker who tested positive for Ebola has “requested total privacy.”
Additional reporting by the Associated Press