The revelation that a second Dallas nurse who is ill with Ebola was cleared to fly the day before her diagnosis raised new alarms as leaders of the nation’s public health system prepared to defend their efforts to contain the deadly virus before a congressional hearing Thursday.
President Barack Obama directed his administration to respond in a “much more aggressive way” to oversee the Dallas cases and ensure the lessons learned there are transmitted to hospitals and clinics across the country. For the second day in a row he canceled out-of-town trips Thursday to stay in Washington and monitor the Ebola response.
Federal health officials who say they know how to shut down the disease within the US were being called to testify in what was looming as a combative hearing by a House oversight panel on Capitol Hill.
In prepared testimony, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of NIH, said that the death of a Liberian man in Dallas and the subsequent infections of the two Dallas nurses as well as an Ebola diagnosis of a nursing assistant in Spain “intensify our concerns about this global health threat.” He said two Ebola vaccine candidates were undergoing a first phase of human clinical testing this fall. But he cautioned that scientists were still in the early stages of understanding how Ebola infection can be treated and prevented.
Spain’s government is wrestling with similar questions. The condition of the nursing assistant, who was infected at a Madrid hospital, appeared to be improving. But a person who came in contact with her before she was hospitalized developed a fever and was being tested for the virus Thursday.
That person is not a health care worker, a Spanish Health Ministry spokesman said.