Ebola Lapses Persisted For Days At Dallas Hospital

The hospital's protective protocol was "insufficient," said Dr. Joseph McCormick of the University of Texas School of Public Health, who was part of the CDC team that investigated the first recorded Ebola outbreak in 1976. Nearly 27 hours later, Amber Joy Vinson, a second nurse who contracted the disease, first appears in Duncan's charts. Because doctors and nurses are focused on logging the patient's care, they may not always note their own safeguards in the medical records. In comments a day earlier, he gave a clue: "For the first several days of the patient's stay, before he was diagnosed, we see a lot of variability in the use of personal protective equipment." Because Ebola has an incubation period of up to 21 days, those who cared for Duncan at the start of his second hospital stay will not be considered safe from infection until Monday. The doctor makes no mention of eye protection such as goggles or a face shield, which are considered basic equipment in Ebola guidelines issued by the CDC. Among their complaints: that Duncan was kept for hours in an area of the emergency department where seven other patients could have been exposed; that a nurse supervisor faced resistance from higher-ups when she said he should be moved to an isolation unit; and that even after the patient was isolated, hospital workers came and went from his bedside without proper protection, then walked through halls that were not properly cleaned. "If any of those allegations — let alone more than one — are correct, if they are valid, then obviously his whole hospitalization put health care workers at risk," said Dr.