Ebola in the U.S.: 1,000 people under some level of watch

• President Barack Obama was expected to name Ron Klain, Vice President Joe Biden’s former chief of staff, as “czar” over the much-criticized federal response to Ebola.

• In a leaked memo, the World Health Organization acknowledged it had botched its response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and blamed incompetent staff and lack of information.

• While Ebola-infected Dallas nurse Amber Vinson, one of the team that treated Duncan in Dallas, continued to receive care at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the first nurse to be confirmed with the virus, Nina Pham, was at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., after being transferred from Dallas late Thursday.

— From news services

In recent days, the ranks of people asked to monitor themselves for symptoms has been steadily growing, especially among health care workers who were involved in the original treatment of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who died from Ebola 10 days ago at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

As of Friday, a pool of about 1,000 people were being watched for symptoms, had been asked to monitor themselves or had been urged to check with counselors at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The group includes a handful of people who have been ordered into quarantine, a larger group that is having their temperatures taken at least daily and a much larger group of travelers who may haven flown on a Frontier Airlines jetliner used by an Ebola patient who traveled while running a low-grade fever.

None of those being monitored has exhibited any Ebola symptoms.

Despite those numbers, the fear of Ebola infection has spread from California to Connecticut —places where people have said they had symptoms such as fever or vomiting, prompting officials to send workers home or to hospitals for testing. Schools in Texas and Ohio have been been closed, and false alarms have been sounded across the country.

However it is travel-related issues that have come to the fore.

On Friday, Carnival Cruise Lines announced that a lab supervisor on vacation from the Dallas hospital had been placed in isolation on her cruise ship out of “an extreme abundance of caution.” The unnamed woman had no signs of illness and was considered to be a “very low risk” by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Yet the cruise ship, the Carnival Magic, was denied docking off of the coast of Mexico and is headed back to Galveston, Texas.

The CDC also said two other Dallas hospital workers, who had traveled abroad and returned, had been asked to monitor themselves for signs or symptoms of Ebola. They had not been under the travel restrictions that are now in place for those who may have been exposed to the virus at Texas Health Presbyterian.

Those travelers are among the 75 health care workers who were involved in treating Duncan, who entered the hospital on Sept. 28 and died there Oct. 8.

In all, Dallas officials said there were about 135 people being monitored to some degree. The boyfriend of Nina Pham, the first nurse to contract Ebola, is also being monitored at the Dallas hospital.

None have shown any symptoms.

There is also a large pool of passengers and others who flew on a Frontier Airlines plane boarded by nurse Amber Vinson, who is being treated for Ebola at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. The airline or the CDC would like to talk especially to the 132 passengers on Flight 1143 from Ohio to Dallas on Oct. 13 with Vinson, who was running a low-grade fever at the time. But it also is trying to reach about 650 people who were on one or more of the additional five flights the plane made after Vinson’s before being taken out of service.

In Ohio, 16 contacts of Vinson have been identified in Summit and Cuyahoga counties and one person is under quarantine, Dr. Mary DiOrio, Ohio Department of Public Health, told reporters on Friday.

“The judgment that we came up to is that we can’t rule out that she wasn’t ill for the time that she was here in Ohio,” the CDC’s Dr. Christopher Braden told reporters Friday. “So we’re going to be conservative, we’re going to be very aggressive. We’re not going to miss anything, there’s no room for error.”

The travel fears have taken a toll on the American public, with travel agents reporting a growing number of customers canceling trips.

Republicans have pushed President Barack Obama to ban all travel from West Africa, where Ebola has already claimed more than 4,500 lives. Texas Gov. Rick Perry backed that call on Friday.

“Air travel is in fact how this disease crosses borders and it’s certainly how it got to Texas,” Perry said during a news conference, adding that there should be an exception for aid workers.

Meanwhile, officials said, Pham is in fair condition, “stable and resting comfortably” and receiving intensive care in a specially equipped isolation ward at the National Institutes of Health near Washington, where she was taken from Dallas late Thursday.

“We will have her here until she is well and clear of the virus,” said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.