Atlanta (CNN) -- A patient being
treated at a Dallas hospital is the first
person diagnosed with Ebola in the
United States, health officials
announced Tuesday.
The unidentified man left Liberia on
September 19 and arrived in the
United States on September 20, said
Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
At that time, the individual did not
have symptoms. "But four or five days
later," he began to exhibit them,
Frieden said. The individual was
hospitalized and isolated Sunday at
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
Citing privacy concerns, health officials
declined to release any details about
how the patient contracted the virus
or how he was being treated.
"I can say he is ill. He is
under intensive care," Dr.
Edward Goodman of the
hospital told reporters.
Frieden declined to
answer whether the
patient is a U.S. citizen. He
also declined to say,
clearly, whether the
patient is a man, although
he referred to the person
as "he" on multiple
occasions.
"The patient was visiting
family members and
staying with family
members who live in this
country," he said at a
news conference.
However, the city of Dallas
in a news release said the
patient "moved to Dallas
from Liberia a week ago."
The patient is believed to
have had a handful of
contacts with people after
showing symptoms of the
virus, and before being
isolated, Frieden said. A
CDC team was en route to
Texas to help investigate
those contacts, and Texas
Gov. Rick Perry will be in
Dallas on Wednesday to hold a news
conference.
Crew members who transported the
patient to the hospital have been
isolated, the chief of staff for Dallas
Mayor Mike Rawlings told CNN. None
have shown symptoms of the disease
so far.
The ambulance that carried the
patient - ambulance # 37 --- was in
use for two days after the transport
but was adequately decontaminated,
said Dallas city spokeswoman Sana
Syed.
"I do want to stress that the
paramedics followed national
standards, as they do after each
transport, in decontaminating the
ambulance," she said. "The Dallas
County health department has
confirmed that paramedics did follow
proper guidelines to avoid
contaminating additional patients."
Frieden, too, sought to play down the
risk to public health. There are
currently no other suspected cases of
Ebola in Texas.
"It's a severe disease, which has a
high-case fatality rate, even with the
best of care, but there are core, tried
and true public health interventions
that stop it," Frieden said.
"The bottom line here is that I have
no doubt that we will control this
importation or this case of Ebola so
that it does not spread widely in this
country," he said.
According to the CDC, Ebola causes
viral hemorrhagic fever, which can
affect multiple organ systems in the
body and is often accompanied by
bleeding.
Early symptoms include sudden onset
of fever, weakness, muscle pain,
headaches and a sore throat, each of
which can be easily mistaken early on
for other ailments like malaria,
typhoid fever and meningitis.
Ebola is spread by direct contact with
someone sick with the virus. That
means people on the patient's flight
are not thought to be at risk, as he did
not begin to show symptoms until
several days after arriving in the
United States, Frieden said.
He spoke about what's being done at
airports to help stop the spread of the
disease.
"One of the things that CDC has done
in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and
Lagos, is to work with the airports'
authority so 100% of the individuals
getting on planes are screened for
fever," the director said. "And if they
have a fever, they are pulled out of
the line, assessed for Ebola and don't
fly unless Ebola is ruled out."
He added, however: "As long as there
continue to be cases in West Africa,
the reality is that patients travel,
individuals travel, and, as appears to
have happened in this case,
individuals may travel before they
have any symptoms."
edition.cnn.com/2014/09/30/health/ebola-us/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

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