US Ebola nurse moves hospitals

Briana Aguirre, a nurse who helped treat her colleague Nina Pham at Texas Presbyterian Hospital,...
Briana Aguirre, a nurse who helped treat her colleague Nina Pham at Texas Presbyterian Hospital, speaks to NBC's Today Show about the facility's protective clothing in a still image from video. REUTERS/NBC Today Show
The US National Institutes of Health said it would take over the care of the first Texas nurse diagnosed with Ebola, as lawmakers blasted the government's response to the virus at home.

Nina Pham, the first nurse diagnosed with Ebola after treating a man who died of the disease, will be transferred late on Thursday (local time) from Dallas to an isolation unit at the US National Institutes of Health outside Washington for treatment, NIH's Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers at a congressional hearing on the government's handling of the virus in the United States.

"We will be supplying her with state-of-the-art care in our high-level containment facilities," said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at NIH.

He announced the decision to move Pham, whose condition was said to be stable, as lawmakers grilled federal officials about their response to the outbreak of Ebola on US soil and flaws in efforts to check its spread within the country.

Pham was part of a team of healthcare workers who had tended to Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who was the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. Duncan died on Oct. 8.

Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer and senior vice president of Texas Health Resources, said at the hearing that mistakes were made in diagnosing Duncan and in giving inaccurate information to the public, and that he was "deeply sorry."

He said there had been no Ebola training for staff before the first patient was admitted. Texas Health operates hospitals and health facilities in North Texas including the facility where Duncan was treated.

Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, is the top doctor overseeing the US response to Ebola and has faced pointed criticism and calls for his resignation over lapses in containing the virus on US soil.

He stressed in his testimony before the congressional oversight panel that there was a lot of fear about the disease, which has killed nearly 4,500 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea this year.

"As the director of CDC, one of the things I fear about Ebola is that it could spread more widely in Africa. If this were to happen, it could become a threat to our health system and the healthcare we give for a long time to come," Frieden said.

The spread of Ebola to Pham and Amber Vinson - another Dallas nurse who had cared for Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital - and revelations that Vinson had subsequently traveled on an airplane while running a slight fever, prompted Frieden to backtrack on earlier statements about his confidence in the ability of American health officials to contain the disease.

"It would be an understatement to say that the response to the first US-based patient with Ebola has been mismanaged, causing risk to scores of additional people," said Representative Diana DeGette, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce congressional subcommittee holding Thursday's hearing.

At least two lawmakers have called for Frieden's resignation. Others, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, urged travel restrictions on the countries hardest hit by Ebola. The disease appeared in the United States last month.

Vinson was transferred to Emory University Hospital for treatment on Wednesday night.

In Ohio, where Vinson had visited family members, two schools in the Cleveland suburb of Solon were closed on Thursday because an employee may have traveled on the same plane as Vinson, though on a different flight.

The Ohio health department said the CDC was sending staff to help coordinate efforts to contain the spread of Ebola.

Frontier Airlines said it had placed six crew members on paid leave for 21 days "out of an abundance of caution." Florida Governor Rick Scott asked the CDC to expand the reach of its contacts to people who flew on the same plane after nurse Amber Vinson's flight. The plane made a stop in Fort Lauderdale after Dallas.

Back in Texas, the Belton school district in central Texas said three schools were closed on Thursday because two students were on the same flight as the nurse.

Frieden has said it was unlikely passengers who flew with Vinson were infected because the nurse had not vomited or bled on the flight, but he said she should not have boarded the plane.

The virus, which also causes fever and diarrhea, is spread through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person.

A federal official said Wednesday Vinson had told the CDC her temperature was 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit (37.5 Celsius), but "was not told not to fly" because that was below the CDC's temperature threshold of 100.4 F (38 C).

One nurse who helped treat Pham came forward on Thursday to say the Dallas hospital was unprepared for the emergency and lacked proper protective gear.

Nurses were not briefed or prepared for Ebola, Briana Aguirre told NBC's "Today" show, and no special precautions were taken when Duncan was admitted to the hospital.

"It was a total chaotic scene," she said.

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