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Thursday, March 28, 2024

“Ebola Cruise” Returns To Texas After Suspected Healthcare Worker Cleared

Courtesy of ZeroHedge. View original post here.

Submitted by Tyler Durden.

In a tumultuous week for Ebola updates (which are only set to get worse with flu season about to unfold, and where every sneeze and fever will be interpreted by the potential host as an early symptom of the deadly disease, likely choking hospitals and ERs around the nation) Friday brought us one of the more disturbing updates when it was revealed that an Ebola-handling healthcare worker had decided to break the “self-watch” protocol and had gone on a Carnival cruise in the Caribbean.

The mood of the travelers promptly descended from merely depressed and dour to what the Independent described as “utter panic” after both Belize and Mexico refused to let the ship dock.

Hardly helping, yesterday a helicopter landed aboard a cruise ship to pick up a blood sample from a passenger who may have handled fluids from an Ebola patient, ahead of the Carnival Magic’s planned docking at Galveston, Texas, Sunday. Carnival said Texas health officials requested that a sample be taken from the passenger and tested, but that the ship is still scheduled to arrive Sunday morning. The company said of the passenger, who is in quarantine, that “she’s feeling absolutely fine.”

Fast forward to this morning, when after what one assumes was a negative blood test, the Carnival Magic ship carrying the suspect, was cleared to return to port in Galveston, TX this morning. As AP reports, “The unidentified woman who is being monitored disembarked the Carnival Magic with her husband shortly after the ship returned to Galveston, Texas, about 6 a.m. EDT, said Vicky Rey, vice president of guest care for Carnival Cruise Lines. Rey said the couple drove themselves home, but offered no further details.

Actually, it may well be that there was no definitive blood test result because according to AP, “company and federal officials have said the woman being monitored for Ebola poses no risk because she has shown no symptoms and has voluntarily self-quarantined.”

So, is it the CDC new “protocol” that self-quarantine and lack of symptoms for a several days is sufficient to pronounce one clear of any disease risk? Inquiring minds want to know. 

Petty Officer Andy Kendrick told The Associated Press that a Coast Guard crew flew in a helicopter Saturday to meet the Carnival Magic and retrieved a blood sample from the woman. He said the blood sample was taken to a state lab in Austin for processing.

 

Kendrick had no further details about how the sample was taken. He said the decision to take the sample was made in coordination with the federal, state and local health authorities.

 

Obama administration officials said the passenger handled a lab specimen from a Liberian man who died from Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital earlier this month. Officials said the woman poses no risk because she has shown no signs of illness for 19 days and has voluntarily self-quarantined on the cruise ship.”

In other news, as CNN reports, also this morning the hospital that has been ground zero for the US Ebola cases, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, took out a full-page newspaper ad, once again offering an apology.

“We slipped up; we’re deeply sorry; we’ll do better.” That could serve as a summary of the open letter from Texas Health Resources CEO Barclay Berdan in the Sunday editions of the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

“As an institution, we made mistakes in handling this very difficult challenge,” Berdan wrote. The hospital is analyzing the errors and will make changes, he said.

 

Hopefully others will also learn from those mistakes and the first cases of Ebola contagion in the country, and its first death, will also be its last, Berdan wrote.

There is some good news: of the four patients currently being treated, at least two appear to be making a recovery.

But perhaps more importantly, Duncan was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian on September 28, when he went there the second time. That was the last day the monitored people could have had contact with him. The maximum incubation period for Ebola is 21 days. That period runs out on Monday.

In other words, the deadline for any new Ebola cases that may emerge out of Duncan as the Index patient, ends tomorrow. The question then becomes whether any other potential diseases carriers have managed to make their way onto the US before being isolated.

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