And then there were three.
As the Texas Department of State Health reported an hour ago, just three days after the shocking announcement that the late Thomas Eric Duncan had managed to infect one nurse in the first person-to-person transmission of Ebola on US ground, a second Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital worker has been infected with the deadly virus.
From the official statement [2]:
Second Health Care Worker Tests Positive for Ebola
News Release
Oct. 15, 2014
A second health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States has tested positive for the disease.
The health care worker reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated at the hospital.
Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored. The type of monitoring depends on the nature of their interactions and the potential they were exposed to the virus.
The worker was among those who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan after he was diagnosed with Ebola.
The preliminary Ebola test was run late Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and results were received at about midnight.
Confirmatory testing on a separate specimen will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of a sick person or exposure to contaminated objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.
Surely the CDC's Tom Frieden will say this is perfectly expected: after all the CDC, which promised it would "stop Ebola in its tracks in the US" just two weeks ago, changed its tune and said to expect more cases.
As of this moment, equity futures are not happy, and certainly not transports, which after a seesaw session in which airline stocks rebounded following a deep oversold condition, are about to become even more oversold as the US public responds to increasingly unpleasant Ebola pandemic news by deciding to "just stay home this weekend."
And now we await the CDC to explain how this is all due to another breach in protocol for a disease which still is clearly not airborne [3].
