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US - Possible ebola exposure case from DRC being monitored in Nebraska - December 29, 2018 - Released Jan 12, 2019

Omaha, Neb - An American providing medical assistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo recently experienced a possible exposure to the Ebola virus and is anticipated to be in Omaha for monitoring. This person has no Ebola symptoms but will be monitored closely. Should any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit would be activated and the person admitted.

"This person may have been exposed to the virus but is not ill and is not contagious," said Ted Cieslak MD, infectious diseases specialist with Nebraska Medicine and associate professor of epidemiology in the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health. "Should any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Medicine/UNMC team is among the most qualified in the world to deal with them."

The individual was transported by private plane and automobile. Working with federal, state and county public health officials, they will be monitored in a secure area not accessible by the public or any patients. Monitoring could last up to two weeks.

While this person isn?t officially a patient, we will be honoring their request for privacy while they are being monitored here. Unless the need arises, we will not be providing updates in the status of this individual during the monitoring period. However, if it becomes necessary for this person to be transferred to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, regular updates should be expected.

Nebraska Medicine treated three patients with Ebola in 2014. In 2015, several others were monitored after exposures, none of whom developed the disease. Nebraska Medical Center is home to one of the nation?s few dedicated biocontainment units. In the years since the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa, infectious disease experts from Nebraska Medicine and its academic partner the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) have taken a leading role in training other health care workers across the U.S. and around the world in dealing with infectious diseases such as Ebola.

https://www.unmc.edu/news.cfm?match=23124
 
Looking at the flight history above from both flightaware and flightradar24 I have pieced together the following movements. It seems that the plane was already stationed in Kenya but planes aren't easy to track while they move around in that part of Africa.

There are reports that Nebraska will monitor the patient for "up to 2 weeks" while there is a 21 day incubation period for ebola, indicating that the exposure could have occurred a few days ago.

It is curious, given the incubation period and quarantine period, that the plane has been in the region for 10 days and that the flight was diverted. Might be nothing, or it might signal that there were difficulties clearing this flight for entry.

Also worth noting that Goma is a 10 hour trek from the centre of the outbreak in Beni, which is a logistical nightmare with an ebola patient. There are thankfully no symptoms reported in this case, but it is unlikely that anyone showing symptoms would be taken on that 10 hour journey if it is going to take 10 days to clear entry into the US. This is a very different situation than the West Africa outbreak when several foreign HCWs were repatriated.

2018-Dec-29 Dulles to Nebraska
2018-Dec-29 Portugal Diverted to Washington Dulles
2018-Dec-29 Senegal to Azores (Portugal)
28 Dec 2018 Congo (Goma) to Senegal
28 Dec 2018 Kenya to Congo (Goma)
20-27 Dec - unknown
2018-Dec-19 Kenya to Somalia
 
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[h=1]PERSON MONITORED FOR EBOLA RELEASED[/h]
January 12, 2019


We are pleased to announce that the American health care provider being monitored for a possible exposure to Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been released from Nebraska Medicine ? Nebraska Medical Center. This individual never developed the potentially deadly disease and poses no risk to the public. This person, who requested privacy during the monitoring process, left our facility and the city of Omaha this morning.



 
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