Ebola

A Nurses United statement says that workers at Texas Health Presbyterian were left to train each other, and were told to call the Infectious Diseases Department about procedures, only to learn that the department had no advice.

There was no advanced preparedness on what to do with the patient. There was no protocol, there was no system. The nurses were asked to call the Infectious Disease Department. The Infectious Disease Department did not have clear policies to provide either.”

After earlier appearing to downplay the extent of the resources needed to deal with the virus, Frieden says the CDC could have done more to contain the outbreak in Texas:

We could’ve sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed.

CBS reports that Navarro may have denied entry to two Nigerian men. Letter to student:

Unfortunately, Navarro College is not accepting international students from countries with confirmed Ebola cases.

The school responds that it is focusing on students from other countries:

As part of our new honors program, the college restructured the international department to include focused recruitment from certain countries each year. Our focus for 2014-15 is on China and Indonesia. Other countries will be identified and recruitment efforts put in place once we launch our new honors program fall 2015.

A model by Northeastern University based on flight patterns shows that the U.S. is at highest risk of more Ebola cases both without a travel reduction from west Africa and with a travel reduction of of 80%.

The CDC says a plan to designate a hospital in each state is still in the discussion plan. One issue is that there are only four hospitals nationwide that have top-level bio-containment units. Abbigail Tumpey, who heads the CDC’s education outreach:

We’d like to have at least one hospital in every state that does feel they could manage a patient from start to finish