TEXAS, United States
A second health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States, has tested positive for the disease, authorities said on Wednesday in a statement.
The department of State Health Services in Texas said that the health care worker reported a fever on Tuesday and was immediately isolated at the hospital.
Officials didn’t give the name of the infected person, but said that the worker was among those who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan after he was diagnosed with Ebola.
The department said that the preliminary Ebola test was run late on Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and results were received at about midnight.
Health officials said that all people who had been exposed to the infected patient will be monitored, and that the type of monitoring depends on the nature of their interactions and the extent that they were exposed to the virus.
On October 12, a woman became the first person to be infected in America. She took the virus from the Liberian man Thomas Eric Duncan, who was infected in his home country and died of the disease in U.S.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of an infected person or exposure to contaminated objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.
The cases of patients suffering from the deadly-virus Ebola are expected to cross over 9,000 this week in West Africa, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. Currently, there are 8,914 known cases in West Africa and the number of reported deaths had already reached 4,447.
WHO Assistant Director-General Dr. Bruce Aylward said at a press conference in Geneva that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was still expanding geographically in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
Aylward said there could be up to 10,000 new Ebola cases per week until December.
www.aa.com.tr/en
