Ebola patient’s family under armed guard
Four relatives confined to Dallas home after man infected by virus arrives for visit from Africa
MONROVIA, Liberia — Thomas Eric Duncan rushed to help his 19-year-old neighbour when she began convulsing days after complaining of stomach pain. Everyone assumed her illness was related to her being seven months pregnant.
When no ambulance came, Duncan, Marthalene Williams’s parents and several others lifted her into a taxi, and Duncan rode in the front seat as the cab took Williams to the hospital. She later died.
Within weeks, everyone who helped Williams that day was either sick or dead, too — victims of Ebola, the virus that is ravaging Liberia’s capital and other parts of West Africa, with more than 3,300 deaths reported.
Ebola is not considered contagious until symptoms appear. The disease is spread through direct contact with saliva, sweat, blood and other bodily fluids. All those who fell ill after helping Williams had touched her. She turned out to have Ebola.
Duncan is now in an isolation ward at a Dallas hospital after falling sick with Ebola following his arrival last month on a family visit.
It is very unlikely that the patient has Ebola but a test has been ordered as a precaution. GILLIAN HOWARD UNIVERSITY HEALTH NETWORK, TORONTO
On Thursday, four members of his family were confined to their Texas home under armed guard as the circle of people possibly exposed to Ebola widened.
Texas State Health Commissioner David Lakey said the confinement would help ensure the relatives can be closely watched, including checking them 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.
State health officials said Thursday more than 80 people are being monitored for Ebola symptoms.
Worries over Ebola kept some Dallas schoolchildren home Thursday after school officials identified five students who may have come into contact with Duncan.
Officials have said those students have shown no symptoms and are being monitored at home, where they are expected to remain for three weeks.
But there are already signs of parents taking no chances.
Yah Zuo left L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary on Thursday morning with her two children, including a six-year-old daughter. Zuo hoped to enrol her elsewhere.
Zuo is of Liberian origin and said she knows Duncan’s family. She said she has not met Duncan since he arrived, but she has known some of the kids now in isolation.
Throughout this whole ordeal, Duncan has unfortunately become a symbol of how the lethal disease could spread within the U.S.
Back in Liberia, he was just another neighbour infected by a virus that is devastating the cluster of homes along the suburban Monrovia street where Williams lived.
“My pa and four other people took her to the car. Duncan was in the front seat with the driver, and the others were in the back seat with her,” recounted her 15-year-old cousin Angela Garway. “He was a good person.”
On Thursday, Liberian authorities announced plans to prosecute Duncan, saying the delivery driver lied about his Ebola status upon leaving the country.
On an airport screening questionnaire obtained by The Associated Press, Duncan said that he hadn’t come into contact with an Ebola patient. However, it is not clear whether he had learned of Williams’ diagnosis before travelling.
In an interview with Canada’s CBC News, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said she was “very saddened” and “very angry” with Duncan for putting Americans at risk, adding: “I just hope that nobody else gets infected.”
In Canada, Global News reported Thursday night that Toronto’s University Health Network confirmed a patient was admitted to a Toronto hospital with a fever, and had recently travelled to West Africa.
“It is very unlikely that the patient has Ebola but a test has been ordered as a precaution,” Gillian Howard, vice-president of public affairs with UHN, told Global News in an email. “Ebola is one of several diagnoses being considered at this point.”