Two American aid workers infected by the deadly Ebola virus in Africa will pass through metro Atlanta in the coming days after being evacuated to the United States.
Both will pass through Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Cobb County, according to Channel 2 Action News, citing a Pentagon press briefing. The workers, Dr. Kent Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol, remain in critical condition, North Carolina-based relief group Samaritan’s Purse said in a statement.
On Thursday, Emory University Hospital reported it is receiving a patient infected with Ebola, though it would not identify that individual. Samaritan’s Purse would not confirm where Brantly and Writebol are being sent for treatment, a spokeswoman for the group said Friday.
The patient headed to Emory is expected to arrive in the next several days and will be placed in a special treatment unit set up by the hospital and the Atlanta-based U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The unit has been up and running for 12 years and has two beds, Emory spokesman Vince Dollard said. It’s on the hospital’s first floor, away from other patients, Dollard added.
Bringing an Ebola patient to the U.S. does not pose a risk to the public, CDC spokeswoman Barbara Reynolds said in an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday. In fact, she said, there is nothing about Ebola that necessarily requires the use of such a specialized treatment unit like the one at Emory.
“Ebola is a viral disease that is not transmitted from person to person through the air,” Reynolds said. “We have other diseases that can be quite frightening and deadly that do transfer through the air.”
The virus is instead passed through bodily fluids. A person with Ebola, which is a type of hemorrhagic fever, would also have to be showing signs of the illness, such as vomiting or diarrhea, to be able to infect other people, she said.
Reynolds added that over the past decade there have been five cases in the U.S. of people who suffered from other types of hemorrhagic fever, not Ebola, and were successfully treated without any secondary transmission.
“The health care system worked,” she said.
News of the Atlanta connection arrives as the Ebola outbreak continues to worsen in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. The death toll has now surpassed 700, and Sierra Leone’s president on Thursday declared a state of emergency, sending security forces house to house looking for people exposed to the disease. The outbreak so far has killed 60 percent of the people infected.
“This is a tragic, painful, dreadful, merciless virus. It’s the largest, most complex outbreak that we know of in history,” CDC director Thomas Frieden said in a news briefing.
He said it may take up to six months or longer to suppress the outbreak. There is no known cure for Ebola, which is characterized by sudden onset of fever, profound weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhea, rash and, in some cases, both internal and external bleeding, according to the World Health Organization.
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