Timeline shows city is prepared

New Haven’s emergency personnel shifted into overdrive

NEW HAVEN >> What would turn out to be a false alarm for Ebola put the city’s emergency personnel into overdrive.

“Now I feel even better about the system, we have in place,” Mayor Toni Harp said Friday, the afternoon during which final results ruled out that a Yale graduate student who traveled to Liberia had Ebola. “This was basically a drill, and I think we did very well.”

A flurry of professional activity erupted Wednesday and Thursday when city and American Medical Response emergency personnel sought to safely transport a patient to the hospital who had traveled to Liberia and was monitoring himself for any symptoms of the disease.

A low-grade fever the student developed set the emergency protocols

in motion.

Chain of command

Chief of Police Dean Esserman alerted the mayor to an unfolding problem at 9 p.m. with a call on her cell phone. Esserman asked Harp to call city Deputy Director of Emergency Operations Rick Fontana.

Fontana told the mayor of the hospital’s need to transport a patient to the hospital to monitor him for Ebola-like symptoms.

Harp said she learned on the phone call a Yale student was checking his temperature, as directed, after returning from Liberia and he had detected a lowgrade fever.

The student had earlier notified their doctor at the Yale University Health Clinic, which then kicked

FROMPAGE 1 an operation into effect where emergency personnel at Yale-New Haven Hospital were notified as were a circle of emergency personnel throughout the city, including Fontana.