False alarm: hospital took Ebola precautions after warnings of Liberia travel

Hospital "confident" man does not have virus

Memorial Hospital had to employ its Ebola treatment protocol today after a man complained of symptoms possibly related to the virus.

Hospital officials say the episode was a false alarm, and that the patient in question could not have been exposed to the virus.

Memorial's head of infection prevention Dr. Mark Anderson said hospital officials received a phone call from emergency responders in a nearby county, saying they had an elderly patient who was very ill with nausea, vomiting and weakness.

At the time, the EMS workers had been told that the man had had contact with a family member who had recently traveled to Liberia and was also ill.

While the information was "second and third hand," Anderson said both the EMS workers and hospital staff decided there was enough concern to engage isolation and precaution measures. Both ambulance and hospital staff wore protective gear and transferred the patient to an isolated ICU unit.

Once the man was stabilized, doctors were able to contact family members directly and determine that the relatives who had been in Liberia had not been there in the recent past. Once that was determined, the hospital's command center ended all cautionary operations. The entire episode lasted less than an hour.

"It was a very good drill and practice for our system, we feel like things worked very well," said Anderson.

The incident at Memorial comes after an Ebola scare at the Nashville airport last night, when emergency officials detained a plane from 11:30 p.m. to 2:45 a.m. after a passenger became sick during a flight out of Dallas, where a nurse has just been diagnosed with the virus.

State Epidemiologist Dr. Tim Jones said the health department in Nashville has been seeing an uptick in calls with Ebola-related concerns in the state, but none have been substantiated.

"The good news is that people want to think about Ebola risk factors and we want medical officials to be asking those questions," said Jones. "These situations let us know those questions are being asked."

When patients are showing possible symptoms of the virus, including a fever, medical officials need to ask whether the patient has traveled in West Africa within the last 21 days, which is the incubation period for the virus.

For more information, read Tuesday's Times Free Press.

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