By Glynn Cosker
Editor, In Homeland Security
A man showing signs of the Ebola virus is an isolation ward at Queen’s Medical Center in Hawaii.
The unidentified patient is awaiting tests for the dreaded disease although hospital authorities were quick to state he might be suffering from one of numerous illnesses with similar symptoms to Ebola.
“The hospital is being very careful, as they should be, to take precautions making sure the patient is in isolation and making sure the people and the public stay safe,” stated Dr. Melissa Viray of the Hawaii Department of Health. “That being said…this is not a ‘for sure’ thing.”
As of Thursday, there is no official word from health department authorities as to whether the patient had recently traveled to Ebola-stricken West Africa.
This latest scare follows a confirmed case of Ebola in Dallas. Thomas Eric Duncan remains in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Friends and family members with whom Duncan interacted while exhibiting symptoms are in isolation according to Texas authorities and the CDC.
Duncan may have had contact with up to 80 people (including five children) in the days leading up to his hospitalization. He was turned away from a health facility in Dallas even though he told the medical staff that he had recently traveled from Liberia in West Africa.
Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu is likely erring on the side of caution as should every medical facility in the United States in the coming months.
Ebola has killed more than 3,000 people in West Africa this year, and worse-case scenarios predict that they may be as many as 1.4 million cases in Africa by early 2015.
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