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Ohio EMS handles Ebola scare well

Medics donned PPE before carrying the feverish girls from their home; the scare reassured responders they’re equipped to manage the disease

By Misti Crane
The Columbus Dispatch

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Yesterday’s Ebola scare — which ended with a flu diagnosis for two young North Side sisters — left those charged with managing health emergencies in Columbus feeling reassured that they’re equipped to help those sickened with the disease and protect the public from its spread.

The sisters, 4 and 6, who’d recently flown from Sierra Leone to Columbus, developed fevers overnight, prompting their 30-year-old mother to call a Columbus Public Health nurse around 1:30 a.m. yesterday.

“She called him and said, ‘What should I do?’” said Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Teresa Long.

The nurse immediately advised the woman to call 911, which she did. Paramedics from Columbus Fire, knowing what to expect when they arrived, donned protective gear before carrying the feverish girls from their home, into an ambulance and on to Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

There, hospital workers, shielded in gowns, gloves and masks of their own, stood ready to rush the sisters into isolation and begin to figure out what was wrong.

Ebola news: Complete coverage

Everyone hoped that the girls had flu or some other virus. One had a cough, which held some promise because it’s not an Ebola symptom. But doctors couldn’t be sure until the Ohio Department of Health ran tests at its Reynoldsburg lab.

The woman and her children had been monitored daily for 17 days after their arrival from Sierra Leone. They were considered low-risk travelers because they had no known Ebola exposure but had been in a country with more than 6,000 cases and 1,250 deaths as of the last count from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has issued an alert against nonessential trips to the country.

Returning travelers considered low risk are monitored daily for three weeks for symptoms, primarily fever, but are not subject to quarantines. The family’s monitoring is scheduled to continue through Wednesday.

Long said last night that she was uncertain of the precise details surrounding the North Side family’s travel but thought that the mother is a U.S. citizen who flew to the west African country and returned with her children.

Long’s staff had developed a relationship with the family in the more than two weeks of daily visits, and she said she thinks the speedy call to a nurse in the middle of the night serves as evidence that the monitoring system is working.

A public-health nurse had been at the family home on Saturday morning and the girls appeared fine, Columbus Public Health spokesman Jose Rodriguez said.

Deputy Fire Chief Jim Davis, who recently developed a more-detailed plan for safely managing calls involving Ebola and other infectious diseases, said his team was well-prepared when it arrived at the North Side home.

They spoke to the mom by cellphone before heading into the home, asking her questions and preparing her because their entry (in imposing masks and suits) might scare the girls.

Once they were inside, they verified the children’s high temperatures and then carried them through the darkness and rain into the ambulance. The girls’ mother traveled with them because of a language barrier, Davis said. Ordinarily, the plan would not call for a family member traveling with someone who might have Ebola.

After handing the girls off for care at Children’s emergency department, the paramedics went to a designated area on the hospital campus where they disrobed and showered, Davis said. From there, they headed back to the firehouse before opting to go home about 8 a.m. to wait with their families for results of the kids’ tests, Davis said.

A Columbus police officer guarded the potentially contaminated ambulance (which had the paramedics’ gear inside) at Children’s until the lab results came through, he said.

Davis, Long and others involved in yesterday’s response said they felt reassured by how the day unfolded and how multiple agencies worked together.

Long’s first call about the scare came about 2 a.m. Her first thought: “Hope for the best and prepare for what might be the hardest, most difficult or the worst.

“I did a quick gut check and said, ‘Well, here we go. This is important. We need to really do this and do this right.’??”

She and others convened at their incident command center at Columbus Public Health, where they worked throughout the morning and afternoon and into the evening. Her phone was still ringing last night, four hours after the news came — first that the girls tested negative for Ebola and second that they had flu.

“It was a great relief and we shared it ASAP with everyone we could,” Long said.

This was the second real-life test of the community’s response since concerns about Ebola arose earlier this year. In October, a South Side woman lied to a fire dispatcher about her sister’s symptoms and travel history in an apparent attempt to expedite their response.

“The systems that we have in place have worked extremely well. Every time we go through this, we learn more about how these things should go,” Long said.

For instance, yesterday enlightened her to a need for more cellphone and iPad chargers in her command center.

Long said she especially was impressed with how well communication between different entities flowed yesterday. Although everything seems to take too long when you’re in a potential crisis, the various parties did what was expected of them and did it well, she said.

Officials from the CDC, who were in touch with the local team throughout the day, also seemed confident in the efforts here, Long said.

“In a call at about 7:30 a.m., the CDC said, ‘You guys are awesome. You’ve done amazing work. You’re doing great.”

City leaders this week plan to look more at the response and see what other lessons they can take away from yesterday, she said.

“This is really important work to get right for our community.”

As for the girls now hospitalized with the flu, Long is hopeful that their symptoms will subside soon. Her staff has given their family members antiviral medication in the hopes none of them will develop flu.

“We’re going to take it day by day now,” she said. “We think that they’re going to do very well.”

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©2014 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)

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