NEW YORK – Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control, said Monday he regretted that media interpreted his comments Sunday as casting blame on the nurse who contracted Ebola in Dallas, but he reiterated that the virus was transmitted for the first time in the U.S. because of a “breach in safety protocol,” not because of defective protocols.
“I feel awful that a health-care worker attending Thomas Eric Duncan became infected,” Frieden said.
The London Daily Mail identified the nurse as Nina Pham, 26, of Fort Worth, Texas, a graduate of Texas Christian University in 2010. The CDC has said she wore a mask, gown, shield and gloves when she attended Duncan in an isolation unit at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Duncan, a Liberian national who arrived in the U.S. last month after contracting the virus, was admitted to the hospital Sept. 26 and died Oct. 8.
Frieden continued to insist the current CDC methodology being used to combat Ebola will work if applied more diligently.
“We need hands-on training and hands-on monitoring to make sure health care workers dealing with Ebola patients follow CDC prescribed safety protocols 100 percent of the time,” Frieden said.
The CDC, however, has been unable to say what precise act or incident constituted the “breach in safety protocol” that caused the health-care worker to contract the disease.
“We have not identified a single thing that caused the health-care worker to become infected,” Frieden admitted after questioning from reporters.
“We regret that some in the media interpreted our comments on Sunday as blaming the health care worker for contracting Ebola,” he said.
“Our staff in Dallas are now retraining staff to put on and take off protective equipment safely, but we cannot say, for instance, that the health care worker got the disease by a needle prick.”
Freiden also made clear the CDC is not considering recommending an embargo on flights from West Africa.
He said the CDC was working with the Transportation Safety Administration to refine and implement health-check protocols at five international airports in the United States to monitor whether or not West Africans had a fever upon their arrival in the country.
“The way we are going to reduce the risk to Americans is to stop the spread of the disease in Africa,” Frieden repeated.
“If we make it harder to get health care professionals and health care materials to West Africa by imposing a travel embargo, Americans will be less safe as a result.”
Every hospital in the U.S., even the smallest, needs to be able to test safely Americans for Ebola, Frieden said.
“We are not going to stop Americans form going to West Africa, so hospitals throughout the United States need to be able to test Americans returning from West Africa for the disease.”
