DALLAS — President Barack Obama urged Americans to keep the Texas Ebola cases “in perspective,” saying that in a nation of more than 300 million people, only three cases have been diagnosed.
“This is a serious disease, but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear, because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need,” Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are expected to release new guidelines for health-care workers concerning Ebola, and officials in Ohio on Saturday gave updates on efforts there to monitor people who may have come in contact with Amber Vinson, a Dallas nurse who visited the state.
The president expressed support for Vinson and Nina Pham, two registered nurses infected with the deadly virus while treating a Liberian man at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. The patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, died at the hospital Oct. 8.
The infected nurses have been transferred to facilities better prepared for such treatment – Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and the National Institutes of Health clinical center in Bethesda, Md.
“Now, even one infection is too many,” Obama added. “At the same time, we have to keep this in perspective. As our public health experts point out, every year thousands of Americans die from the flu.”
Vinson flew on a commercial airline to Ohio last weekend, returning to Dallas on Monday, where she reported a fever and later was diagnosed with an Ebola infection.
The airline contacted passengers on Frontier Airlines flights and at places she visited in Ohio. She was transferred to Emory on Wednesday, while Pham was moved to Bethesda on Thursday.
On Saturday morning, Ohio Gov. Jon Kasich said 116 people who may have had contact with Vinson were being monitored, though only one had been placed under quarantine. Twenty-nine of those people were considered “close contacts” of Vinson, according to Mary DiOrio, state epidemiologist, while health officials were also monitoring 87 people who were on Vinson’s flight.
Kasich cautioned that the numbers will change as health officials continue their investigation. None of the patients had shown symptoms of Ebola, he said.
The 116 Ohioans being monitored are under various levels of scrutiny. Some have been required to meet with a physician daily, according to DiOrio, while others have been asked to self-monitor their temperatures and have daily phone contact with a medical professional.
Another Dallas health-care worker, identified as a laboratory supervisor, remains isolated in a cabin of the cruise ship Carnival Magic, which was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday morning, headed for Galveston, Texas, after having been refused port access in Mexico due to her presence.
She is not ill, but was under watch because she may have been in contact with laboratory specimens from Duncan, according to CDC officials.
The unidentified laboratory supervisor traveled on the weeklong cruise before either of her fellow workers was diagnosed with the infection, at a time when the CDC categorized her in a very low exposure category.
Addressing those concerns Saturday, Obama said Ebola was “difficult to catch. It’s not transmitted through the air like the flu. You cannot get it from just riding on a plane or a bus. The only way that a person can contract the disease is by coming into direct contact with the bodily fluids of somebody who is already showing symptoms.”
Obama noted that he met and hugged doctors and nurses who have treated Ebola patients. “I’ve met with an Ebola patient who recovered, right in the Oval Office. And I’m fine,” he said.
Obama also expressed confidence in safety protocols aimed at preventing the spread of the virus. “We know the protocols. And we know that when they’re followed, they work,” the president said.
The CDC, however, has said it will issue new infection-control guidelines after health-care professionals sharply criticized the existing protocols.
In his address, Obama made no mention of naming an Ebola “czar,” Ron Klain, former chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden, an appointment that is being met with criticism about Klain’s lack of medical credentials.
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