U.S. WIDENS QUARANTINE FOR EBOLA
DALLAS • Four relatives of U.S. Ebola patient Thomas Duncan were confined to their Texas home under armed guard Thursday as the circle of people possibly exposed to the virus widened to 80 and Liberian authorities said they would prosecute the man for allegedly lying on an airport questionnaire.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said the unusual order was made after the relatives were “non-compliant” with a request not to leave the apartment. Texas State health commissioner David Lakey said the quarantine would help ensure they can be closely watched, including checking for fevers over the next three weeks.
“We didn’t have the confidence we would have been able to monitor them the way that we needed to,” he said.
Mr. Duncan’s belongings, including clothes and possibly sheets, remain bagged inside the apartment.
Meanwhile, Texas health officials are expanding their efforts to stem the risk of the Ebola virus spreading, contacting about 80 people who may have had direct contact with the man or someone close to him.
None of them is showing signs of the illness. They include 12 to 18 people who came in direct contact with Mr. Duncan, as well as others known to have had contact with them, said Erikka Neroes, a spokeswoman for the Dallas County Health and Human Services agency.
“This is a big spider web” of people involved, she said.
The initial group includes three members of the ambulance crew that took Mr. Duncan to the hospital and five schoolchildren.
Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear up to three weeks after exposure to the virus.
In Liberia, authorities an- nounced plans to prosecute Mr. Duncan, claiming he lied on a form about not having contact with an infected person.
He answered questions about his health and activities before flying out from Monrovia. The form, obtained by The Associated Press, shows he answered no to them all.
These included whether he had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of anyone who had died in an area affected by Ebola.
“We expect people to do the honourable thing,” said Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberia Airport Authority. It has taken the case to the Ministry of Justice, which will formally prosecute it.
Neighbours in Monrovia believe Mr. Duncan become infected when he helped carry his landlord’s convulsing pregnant daughter to a clinic to be treated for Ebola.
Marthalene Williams, 19, was turned away from the overcrowded clinic and died the next day.
The landlord’s son and three neighbours who came in contact with her also died soon afterward.
Mr. Duncan arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 to visit relatives and fell ill a few days later.
The emergency room at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital sent him home last week, even though he told a nurse he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa. He returned to the ER a few days later when his condition worsened.
The man has been kept in isolation at the hospital since Sunday. Thursday, he was listed in serious but stable condition.
In Mr. Duncan’s Monrovia neighbourhood, so many people have fallen ill residents are too frightened to comfort a nine-year-old girl whose mother died from the disease.
Containing the spread of Ebola in Dallas now depends on the effectiveness of contact tracing, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s core strategy.