This is the precursor to the true impact on healthcare by Ebola. As presented by a physician at the Fall PATCON, our healthcare services will be overwhelmed and collapse by the end of the year. The initial symptoms of Ebola are the same as influenza. When thousands of people go for medical services, the physicians have no choice but to assume Ebola. What happens when a facility is quarantined until lab results are finalized?
In our county’s only hospital, one Ebola patient would trigger the quarantine of the entire facility. That means we have no hospital services and the medical personnel are not available to provide services in an alternative location since they are part of the quarantine. But this hospital has instituted a new policy this week according to a first hand account given to me yesterday: they ask anyone entering if they have visited Africa or have been in contact with anyone who has Ebola. When asked what would happen if they answer “yes”, the nurse said she did not have any direction for that contingency. When asked what she personally would do, she said she would probably run out the back door.
What would you do?
David DeGerolamo
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A Tampa-bound flight was held for about three hours Friday night in Charlotte, N.C., after a passenger began throwing up in the lavatory during boarding.
The passenger had a fever of about 100 degrees and complained of nausea and chills. While those could be symptoms of Ebola, North Carolina Health Department officials determined she didn’t have the deadly disease.
Even so, the woman was transported to a hospital “in an abundance of caution,” according to Mecklenburg, N.C., County officials, and the 187 passengers were not allowed to leave the US Airways plane while it sat at the airport.
“Out of an abundance of caution, paramedics didn’t want the passengers to deplane,” airline spokesman Kent Powell told the Charlotte Observer.
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