DEVELOPMENTS
• A new study underscored the potential danger of airline passengers infected with Ebola leaving West Africa: If there were no exit screening in place, researchers estimate that three people with the disease might fly out of the region each month. The hardest-hit West African nations have been checking passengers since summer, but the new research is a reminder of how much easier it could be for the virus to travel outside the outbreak region if those measures weren't in place — and that screening can't catch every case.
• Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., announced Monday she would hold a hearing Nov. 6 on the Federal response to Ebola. It will be the first hearing in the Democratic-run Senate since the first U.S. case was discovered in Dallas. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced last week that he would hold a hearing Friday, and the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee held a hearing last week.
• The European Union stepped up efforts Monday to raise nearly $1.3 billion to combat the outbreak.
But with the household emerging symptom-free from a 21-day incubation period, Jallah’s family members are now trying to resume their lives — replacing the personal belongings incinerated in a cleanup at her mother’s home, and overcoming the stigma of the Ebola scare that has gripped Dallas.
On Monday, Jallah beamed with pride as she sent her children back to school with clearance letters from the Dallas County health department tucked into their backpacks. Her mother emerged from her own confinement and spent the early afternoon looking for a new place to live.
“We were sitting here traumatized,” Jallah said. “We just thank God we never came down with the virus.”
The city of Dallas announced Monday it is coordinating with a local church and donors to provide Jallah’s mother, Louise Troh, with funds to pay for six months of housing. Once she chooses a location, nonprofits will assist the family with furniture, linens and other household items, the city said.
Troh’s fiance, Thomas Eric Duncan, was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. He died Oct. 8.
Health officials said Monday about 50 people have passed the incubation period safely. Others who are still being monitored include health care workers who treated Duncan as well as those who cared for two nurses who had treated Duncan and also became infected.
There are now about 120 people in Texas being monitored for symptoms, with their wait period ending Nov. 7, said Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings.
There are also about 140 people being monitored in Ohio because of contact or potential contact with nurse Amber Vinson, officials there said. Vinson, who cared for Duncan in Texas, flew from Dallas to Cleveland on Oct. 10 and flew back to Dallas Oct. 13.
As the threat in Dallas eased, an Ebola patient who had been treated in Atlanta since early September was released from Emory University Hospital after he was determined to be free of the virus. Hospital and health officials never released his name, in keeping with his family’s wish for privacy.
After Duncan was diagnosed with Ebola, Troh, her 13-year-old son, Duncan’s nephew and a family friend were ordered by a Dallas court to stay inside the apartment among Duncan’s used linens. Five days later they were evacuated to a four-bedroom home in an isolated corner of a 13-acre gated property owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Dallas, southwest of downtown.
Except for a few plastic bins filled with personal documents, photographs, trophies and a Bible, the apartment was stripped to the carpeting and the contents incinerated.
“We want to restore what’s lost but more than that, we want to give her a running start on her new life,” said Troh’s pastor, George Mason of Wilshire Baptist Church in Dallas.
While health workers cleared Jallah of having Ebola, the disease’s stigma lingers — including among fellow Liberians, she said.
“If they see me at the store, they run away,” she said.
Vinson is being treated at the specialized unit at Emory University Hospital. Another nurse who treated Duncan and contracted the virus, Nina Pham, is being undergoing treatment at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
Nurses have been clamoring for more guidance and better garb, saying they have never cared for Ebola patients before and feel unprepared and underequipped.
Revised guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for health care workers treating Ebola patients will include using protective gear “with no skin showing,” a top U.S. federal health official said Sunday, and the Pentagon announced it was forming a team to assist medical staff in the U.S., if needed.
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