Texas officials silent on what went wrong with Ebola patient

Dallas health officials are keeping quiet about how they initially failed to treat the country’s first reported case of Ebola.

At a briefing with reporters Monday, city leaders again declined to provide details about the communication breakdown at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital that led to the release of an Ebola-infected patient. The patient, Thomas Duncan, was brought to the emergency room in an ambulance three days after he released.  

{mosads}“I’ve been concentrating on what we need to do right now to protect Dallas,” said David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. “We’ve got to concentrate on putting plans in place, then we’ll evaluate what happened.”

The briefing marked the first time that city officials have taken questions since Dallas Presbyterian Hospital attempted to blame its failure to admit the Ebola-infected patient on its online records system — and then changed its story.

In a statement last Thursday, the hospital said it failed to communicate the patient’s travel records — which showed that he was recently in Liberia — because of a faulty electronic records system. The next day, hospital communications officials reversed course and said “there was no flaw.”

When asked about his response to the conflicting reports, Lakey acknowledged “obviously that answer got changed several times.”

As a result, Lakey said he has stressed the importance of taking accurate travel histories in hospitals across the state.

“Before this, [Ebola] seemed remote. It was occurring halfway around the world. Many folks may not have taken the travel history as seriously as it should have been,” Lakey said.

Lakey, along with Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, also declined to answer questions about the patient’s treatment, deferring to the hospital communications team.

The hospital confirmed Monday that it had begun treating Duncan with an experimental Ebola treatment, but Lakey declined to provide details about the drugs. He also declined to answer questions about the costs of the patient’s care and who was footing that bill.

Lakey was also asked whether Duncan, who remains in critical condition, would be in better health if he was not initially turned away because staff believed he had a low-grade fever.

“Would the first three days have made a difference? I don’t know,” Lakey said.