Reported Earlier Today
Perry Returning Early From Europe to Direct Ebola Response
Gov. Rick Perry is canceling the final leg of his Europe trip and returning to Texas to help coordinate the response to the outbreak, now that a second case among health care workers has occurred in his state.
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The trip was widely seen as a way for Mr. Perry to burnish his foreign policy credentials in the event that he decides to make another run for president in 2016.
Dallas County, which includes the city of Dallas, is home to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. That is where Thomas Duncan, the patient who carried the Ebola virus with him from Liberia, was treated and died died Oct. 8. Subsequently two nurses that cared for him there have been infected with the deadly virus. One of the nurses is now bieng treated in an isolation unit in Atlanta, Georgia, and the second is bieing moved to Bethesda, Maryland for treatment, according to a Dallas and federal officials cited by AP and NBC News, respectively.
Dallas County Meeting Called
Four commissioners and the county judge are scheduled to meet at 2pm to consider “extraordinary measures” necessary because Dallas “has the potential to suffer widespread or severe damage, injury, loss or threat of life resulting from the Ebola virus,” according to a proposal obtained in advance by the Guardian.
Passing the proposal would activate the county’s emergency management plan and a request that Texas governor Rick Perry also declare a state of emergency. This would pave the way for state or federal funds to be transferred to Dallas to help pay for dealing with the crisis.The state of emergency would give the county judge, Clay Jenkins, wide-ranging authority under state law to control the movement of people into, out of and within the county if he chose. It would also allow him to “order the evacuation of all or part of the population from a stricken or threatened area” if this was deemed necessary.
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John Wiley Price, the commissioner for district three, told the Guardian that the situation was putting a strain on the county’s funds.
“This is still evolving and the only way we can get reimbursed as a county is to make this declaration,” he said. “We escrowed a million dollars last week and we are already north of that. As we continue with clean-ups, surveillance and containment, we need to be able to pay for it.”
Speaking shortly before the commissioners meeting, Price said the Dallas hospital at the centre of the crisis had bungled its response. “It wasn’t handled appropriately and as a result we are all suffering,” he said.
Unexpectedly, things changed.
Dallas County holds off seeking state-of-emergency declaration over Ebola
Officials in Dallas County, Texas held off asking Gov. Rick Perry to declare a local state of emergency over Ebola, and will instead rely on ‘voluntary’ containment orders to restrict movement of workers who came in contact with victims of the disease.
Texas healthcare workers at risk of Ebola asked to stay out of public
Seventy-five staff members of Dallas hospital asked to sign ‘binding legal order’ that states they will avoid public spaces.
Clay Jenkins, who as county judge is the highest-ranking elected official in Dallas county, announced the voluntary agreements after surprising the audience for the commissioners meeting by saying that he would not be declaring a state of emergency because of Ebola.
The proposal, published in advance awaiting only Jenkins’s signature, had called for “extraordinary measures” necessary because Dallas “has the potential to suffer widespread or severe damage, injury, loss or threat of life resulting from the Ebola virus.”
Instead, there is a new measure calling for healthcare workers deemed to be at risk of contracting Ebola after dealing with a patient who died from the virus in Texas to be asked to sign voluntary agreements to stay away from the public. Any of those who refuse to sign the agreement will be subject to a legal control order,
Seventy-five staff members from Texas Health Presbyterian hospital are being given a “binding legal document and order” that states they will avoid public transport, not go to areas where large numbers of people congregate, and continue to be monitored twice a day for symptoms,
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The healthcare workers will also have their home addresses flagged on the internal systems of emergency services, said Jenkins, adding that this would prompt first responders responding to calls from their houses to raise an alarm. The flags would disappear when they are no longer at risk of Ebola.
Jenkins indicated that the decision had been taken following consultations with other officials including Rick Perry,