DALLAS - Amid widening public concern of Ebola across the United States, federal health officials said on Saturday that they had assessed more than 100 possible cases of the disease in recent weeks. But they have confirmed only one, in a Liberian man in Dallas, the first Ebola case diagnosed in this country.
Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters that the Dallas case, as well as the spreading outbreak in West Africa, had increased attention about the virus among both the public and health workers.
'We have already gotten well over 100 inquiries of possible patients,' Dr. Frieden said. 'We've assessed every one of those with local health departments and hospitals. And just this one patient has tested positive. We expect that we will see more rumors, or concerns, or possibilities of cases. Until there is a positive laboratory test, that is what they are - rumors and concerns.'
In addition to doing their own testing of these suspected cases, federal officials have helped more than a dozen laboratories around the United States do their own Ebola testing.
One of those cases took place at Howard University Hospital in Washington, which issued a statement on Saturday saying that, after working with the District of Columbia Health Department and the federal, disease centers, it had 'ruled out' Ebola in a patient who was on Thursday. The patient, who had traveled to Nigeria, had been placed in isolation 'in an abundance of caution,' a statement by the university's president, Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick, said.
In the one confirmed case, the Obama administration said Saturday that it had issued an emergency permit allowing an Illinois company to transport large quantities of potentially Ebola-contaminated material from the apartment where the infected Liberian man had stayed, as well as from the hospital where he is being treated, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. The permit ends days of delays in disposing of the waste.
