Fears ease as quarantine ends

Spanish nursing assistant recovers from potentially fatal virus

Ebola fears began to ease for some in the United States on Monday as a monitoring period passed for those who had come into close contact with a victim of the disease.

A cruise ship scare ended when the boat returned to port and a lab worker on board tested negative for the virus.

Federal officials meanwhile ramped up their readiness to deal with future cases. A top government official said revised guidance instructs health workers treating Ebola patients to wear protective gear "with no skin showing". The Pentagon said it is forming a team to support civilian medical staff in the US.

In Dallas, Louise Troh and several friends and family members will on Monday finally be free to leave a stranger's home where they have been confined under armed guard for 21 days, the maximum incubation period for Ebola.

Troh was the girlfriend of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died of the disease at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Oct 8, and the others had close contact with him.

"I want to breathe, I want to really grieve, I want privacy with my family," said Troh.

The incubation period also passed for about a dozen health workers who encountered Duncan when he went to the Dallas hospital for the first time, on Sept 25.

Duncan was sent home but returned by ambulance on Sept 28 and was admitted. Two nurses who treated him during that second visit - Nina Pham and Amber Vinson - are now hospitalized with Ebola.

Vinson's family issued a statement on Sunday saying they have hired a lawyer and are troubled by comments and media coverage that "mischaracterize" Vinson, who is being treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Vinson "has not and would not knowingly expose herself or anyone else", the statement said.

Dallas County and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials cleared her to fly last week to Dallas from Ohio, and "suggestions that she ignored any of the physician and government-provided protocols recommended to her are patently untrue and hurtful", the family said.

On Sunday, a Carnival Cruise Lines ship returned to Galveston, Texas, from a seven-day trip marred by worries over a health worker on board who was being monitored for Ebola.

The lab supervisor had handled a specimen from Duncan and isolated herself on the ship as a precaution.

About 4,000 passengers on the cruise had to miss a stop in Cozumel, Mexico, where the boat was not allowed to dock because of the scare. Carnival said it was informed by US health authorities Sunday morning that the worker tested negative for Ebola.

Testing positive

A Spanish nursing assistant infected with Ebola after treating missionary priests with the disease repatriated from West Africa has managed to beat it after nearly two weeks of treatment in Madrid and has no traces of the virus in her bloodstream, according to test results released on Sunday night by Spain's government.

Teresa Romero, 44, is believed to be the first person to have caught Ebola via transmission outside of West Africa in the current outbreak.

Romero was among Spain's team of health care workers caring for the priests in August and September and told officials she remembered touching a glove to her face after leaving the hospital room of Father Miguel Pajares, who died on Sept 25.

She entered his room twice - once to change his diaper and another time after he died to retrieve unspecified items.

Romero, who remains quarantined at Madrid's Carlos III hospital, must undergo another Ebola test to make sure she is virus-free after testing positive on Oct 6.

(China Daily 10/21/2014 page12)