United States health authorities say a laboratory technician who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus after a protocol breach is showing no signs of the disease.
The unidentified technician at the national public health institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, is being monitored every day.
“Only one technician was exposed. So far she’s showing no signs of having the disease,” the US Ebola coordinator Ron Klain said.
The CDC has confirmed that the laboratory technician may have been exposed a week ago when she was working with Ebola specimens that were supposed to have been inactivated but which may have instead contained live virus.
The technician will be monitored for signs of infection for a total of 21 days, which is the disease’s incubation period.
In a media interview, Mr Klain called the mishap “unacceptable” and said CDC director Dr Tom Frieden had promised a report on the investigation into the incident within four weeks.
Mr Klain said there had been no risk to the public or the larger CDC campus from the possible exposure.
The error follows two high-profile cases of mishandled samples of anthrax and avian influenza at the CDC earlier this year that called into question safety practices at the highly-respected research institute.
Mr Klain, who visited the CDC lab in October, said it had been studying Ebola for 20 years without incident and had processed more than 10,000 samples of the virus during the current outbreak, which has killed more than 7,500 people in West Africa.
“The American people should be very proud of the job that is being done in Atlanta by Dr Frieden and the team at CDC,” Mr Klain said.
Two nurses in Dallas who treated an Ebola patient from Liberia are the only people known to have become infected with the disease on US soil. They both recovered.
In October, Mr Klain was appointed by president Barack Obama to the newly-created position of Ebola response coordinator to oversee the nation’s handling of the burgeoning health crisis.
Reuters