Ebola “S.W.A.T teams” part of Obama plan to fight virus

By Henni Espinosa, ABS-CBN North America Bureau

Oct. 16, 2014

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – President Barack Obama has expressed confidence that a serious Ebola outbreak can be avoided in the United States.

Yesterday, the president met with his cabinet and spoke by teleconference with the head of the CDC in a White House briefing on the Ebola crisis.

“What I’ve directed the CDC to do is that as soon as someone is diagnosed with Ebola, we want a rapid response team – a S.W.A.T. team essentially – from the CDC to be on the ground as quickly as possible,” said President Obama. “Hopefully within 24 hours so that they are taking the local hospital step by step, through exactly what needs to be done and making sure that all of the protocols are properly observed, that the use of protective equipment is done effectively and that the disposal of the protective equipment is done properly.”

While Obama stresses that the spread of illness must be monitored more aggressively worldwide, Republican leaders like House Speaker John Boehner are calling on the president to consider a temporary ban on travel to the U.S. from countries afflicted with the Ebola virus.

These developments from the government come as two Dallas nurses continue to be treated for Ebola.

Twenty-six-year-old Nina Pham will be transferred to a National Institute of Health facility in Maryland.

Pham contracted the virus while treating infected patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last week in Dallas.

Twenty-nine-year-old Amber Vinson, the second nurse to test positive, arrived in Atlanta Wednesday evening to begin treatments at Emory University Hospital.

The day before the nurse went to a Dallas hospital with Ebola symptoms, she was flying on a commercial jet with 132 other people.

Health officials now want to interview those passengers.

However, before flying from Cleveland back to Dallas, Vinson called the CDC to report a temperature of 99.5 degrees and informed the agency that she was getting on a plane.

A federal official said Vinson was not told she could not get on the plane.

Meantime, the management of the Texas Presbyterian Hospital, where Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan died and the two nurses contracted the deadly virus, apologized for mistakes it made in handling the disease, particularly in its initial treatment of Duncan. Balitang America was told by a reliable source that there is a big population of Filipino nurses working there.