Obama urges nation to keep Ebola cases ‘in perspective’

DALLAS — Trying to calm an increasingly alarmed public, President Obama on Saturday urged Americans to keep the Texas Ebola cases “in perspective,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prepared new guidelines for health care workers who might handle patients with the deadly virus.

In his weekly radio address, Obama stressed that in a nation of more than 300 million people, only three Ebola cases have been diagnosed. “This is a serious disease,” he said, “but we can’t give in to hysteria or fear, because that only makes it harder to get people the accurate information they need.”

The remarks came amid a growing public concern over the virus that has killed 4,500 people in West Africa and last month landed in the U.S. when Thomas Eric Duncan arrived in Dallas from Liberia. Duncan died of the disease Oct. 8, and two registered nurses who treated him at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas have since contracted Ebola.

On Saturday, Duncan was remembered at a memorial service in Salisbury, N.C., as a compassionate man whose virtues may have led to his infection in his native Liberia and death as the first victim of the disease in the United States. Duncan’s neighbors in Liberia believe he was infected by helping a pregnant neighbor who later died from Ebola.

His family and friends gathered at a Southern Baptist church with a primarily Liberian flock near where Duncan’s mother lives.

Nurses Amber Vinson and Nina Pham have been transferred to facilities better prepared to treat Ebola patients. Vinson arrived at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Wednesday, and Pham was moved to the National Institutes of Health clinical center in Bethesda, Md., the next day.

On Saturday, Ohio officials detailed efforts to monitor people who may have come in contact with Vinson. She flew on a Frontier Airlines flight to Ohio last weekend, returning to Dallas on Monday, where she reported a fever and was diagnosed with an Ebola infection.

Ohio Gov. Jon Kasich said 116 people who may have had contact with Vinson were being monitored, and one was placed under quarantine. Twenty-nine of those people were considered “close contacts” of Vinson, according to Mary DiOrio, state epidemiologist, while health officials were also monitoring 87 people who were on Vinson’s flight. Kasich said none of the patients had shown symptoms.

In Dallas, 48 people who came in contact with Duncan were being monitored for possible Ebola symptoms during the 21-day incubation period. A few have already cleared the 21-day period. The bulk of them, including a high-risk group of 10 people, are expected to end the monitoring period midnight Monday, said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.

Another Dallas health care worker, identified only as a laboratory supervisor, remains isolated in a cabin of the Carnival Magic cruise ship, which was in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, headed for Texas, after having been refused port access in Mexico because of the worker’s presence. The ship is expected to dock in Galveston on Sunday.

The health care worker is not ill, but was under watch because she may have been in contact with laboratory specimens from Duncan, according to CDC officials.

Critics have said Obama has acted too slowly to head off Ebola. Some argue that newly named U.S. Ebola “czar” Ron Klain, a lawyer and former chief of staff for Vice President Joe Biden, lacks the medical credentials to meet the challenge. Obama did not mention Klain on Saturday.