Another Ebola scare in Dallas turns out to be just a scare

On Friday in Virginia, there was a flurry of activity at the Pentagon when a woman who said she had been to Africa vomited in the parking lot.

Did she have Ebola? No.

A day later in Texas, there was another flurry when word got around that a woman who was on an Ebola watch list had vomited at a transit stop.

Did she have Ebola? No. Was she on a watch list? No. (She also didn’t vomit. She spit.)

In fact, a spokeswoman for Dallas Area Rapid Transit said there were no indications of any biohazards or spills on any vehicle she had used.

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, speaking with reporters Saturday, said the DART false alarm was not unusual.

“We get several of those calls a day,” said Jenkins, the highest elected official in Dallas County. While most Dallas residents “have reacted with common sense and compassion” to the Ebola monitoring, he said, “there are always a few outliers,” a small group that panics. (The incident came the same day President Obama told the country that “we can’t give in to hysteria” over Ebola.)

Jenkins stood outside of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, which treated the nation’s first Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who died Oct. 8. Two nurses who helped care for him, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, are now infected with the disease.

In Dallas, 48 people who came in contact with Duncan were being monitored for possible Ebola symptoms during the 21-day incubation period. A few have already cleared the 21-day period. The bulk of them, including a high-risk group of 10 people, are expected to end the monitoring period midnight Monday, Jenkins said.

So far, none except the nurses have tested positive for Ebola or shown symptoms.

“If we don’t see new patients, we’ll see the remainder of the 48 come off the list,” Jenkins said. “We’re right in the middle of a hot zone.”

He said Pham, 26, had been downgraded to fair condition at a National Institutes of Health facility in Bethesda, Md., and Vinson, 29, was stable at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta as of Saturday morning.

Jenkins said 25 of the 75 healthcare workers in Dallas being monitored for contact with Ebola were voluntarily staying at the hospital Saturday. Most of them had signed voluntary agreements not to venture out in public or take public transportation, he said. They are furloughed and will not have contact with patients while at the hospital, he said.

On Saturday night, Texas Health Presbyterian released the text of a full-page ad that, while expressing grief for Duncan and concern for Pham and Vinson, also apologizes to the Dallas community.

“When we initially treated Mr. Duncan, we examined him thoroughly and performed numerous tests but the fact that Mr. Duncan had traveled to Africa was not communicated effectively among the care team, though it was in his medical chart. On that visit to the Emergency Department, we did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola. For this, we are deeply sorry.

“Although we had begun our Ebola preparedness activities, our training and education program had not fully deployed before the virus struck. In short, despite our best intentions and skilled medical teams, we did not live up to the high standards that are the heart of our hospital’s history, mission and commitment.”

The ad, labeled “A letter to our community,” will appear Sunday in the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Hennessy-Fiske reported from Dallas and Queally from Los Angeles.