CORONAVIRUS ‘THREW US A CURVE’
Probe into Houston patients’ contacts leads to quarantines
An investigation into who the eight known Houston-area coronavirus patients had contact with before they were aware they could be infected led to the quarantine of nearly a dozen health care workers Saturday.
The Houston-area patients were among 17 who returned around Feb. 20 from the same Nile River cruise in Egypt. About a week later, they learned a different person on the trip had contracted the new coronavirus, placing them at risk. Eight of those passengers —spread across Harris County, Fort Bend County and Houston — tested positive since Wednesday. The status of the other nine Houston-area people on the trip is unclear.
No additional cases were reported Saturday, as the health care officials continued their extensive contact investigation, said Harris County Public Health spokeswoman
Elizabeth Perez.
“We start mapping out and indexing anyone they came into contact with during the incubation period. Who were you with this day and this day?” Perez said.
The county cannot yet estimate how many people may have inadvertently been exposed to coronavirus because of the Houston-area cases, Perez said. Harris County Public Health notified St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Hedwig Village that one of the eight patients attended an Ash Wednesday mass, and urged congregants who sat nearby to contact the health department.
The county has not determined the need to issue any similar warnings to other facilities patients may have visited, Perez said, but would do so if there was a clear risk to the public. She said health officials seek to balance the privacy of patients against the need to
keep the community safe.
“We don’t want individuals who potentially could be at risk or could be positive for coronavirus to be afraid their neighbors are going to find out, or worried about being alienated in the community,” Perez said.
Memorial Hermann announced Saturday the hospital system had asked 11 health care workers to self-quarantine for the next two weeks after learning that a patient who was treated for gastrointestinal pain had been on the cruise ship in Egypt and later tested positive for the new coronavirus.
Doctors at Memorial Hermann said that the patient hadn’t initially been screened for COVID-19 and the patient was released from a Memorial Hermann medical facility about a week ago. They declined to identify the location of the clinic or hospital, citing privacy concerns.
“The virus threw us a curve,” said Dr. David Callender, president and CEO of Memorial Hermann Health System.
At the time, Egypt wasn’t identified as a concern for travelers, and gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea hadn’t yet been noted as a potential warning sign of the disease, hospital officials said at a press conference.
Eleven Memorial Hermann employees were potentially exposed to the patient during the first visit at the medical facility, and three of those workers are showing “mild” symptoms, said Dr. Angela Shippy, chief medical and quality officer at Memorial Hermann.
All 11 workers have been tested for COVID-19. Officials expect to receive test results within 24 to 48 hours.
Fort Bend officials said Friday they had asked 10 people to selfquarantine who had come into contact with a patient there, while at Rice University 14 people who had interacted with a patient, a school employee, were under quarantine.
The eight local patients traveled on the German river cruiser M.S. A’Sara on the Egyptian river in late February. Three Maryland residents also were onboard and later contracted coronavirus, that state’s governor said Friday.
Egypt is not currently on the federal Centers for Disease Control’s restricted travel list. Egyptian health officials said the cases aboard the A’Sara were traced to a Taiwanese-American woman who traveled on the vessel in January, the New York Times reported.
Twelve crew members tested positive for coronavirus on Thursday and the ship was moved to a remote stretch of river to be disinfected, the newspaper reported.
Mayor Sylvester Turner called for all Houston residents who have traveled internationally to take precautions when they return home.
“Out of an abundance of caution, I encourage people who recently traveled internationally to self-quarantine for 14 days. Also, if you have traveled or plan to travel internationally, I advise you wait two weeks before visiting nursing homes or senior living facilities, as an added precaution. And, people who are sick need to always stay home to prevent infecting others,” he wrote on Facebook Saturday night.