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Exclusive: New test for diagnosing Ebola goes unused

WABC NEWS                                          Oct. 28 2014
By Jim Hoffer

NEW YORK

Report says that when a 5-year-old boy who came back from Guinea was admitted to New York's Bellevue hospital  recently,  city officials stopped the use of a a one-hour testing device although it had received the FDA's emergency approval.

As a result, it took 10 hours from the time he spiked a fever till his parents, medical staff, and the public found out, he did NOT have Ebola.

Read complete article.

http://7online.com/health/new-test-for-diagnosing-ebola-goes-unused/369875/

Direct link - BioFire Defense
http://biofiredefense.com/

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Nurse's discharge leaves one Ebola case in U.S., though larger battle continues

CNN                                             Oct. 28, 2014

By Greg Botelho, Jason Hanna and Ashley Fantz,

The release today of nurse Amber Vinson  from the Emory Unversity hospital in Atlanta hospital leaves a single person in the United States now battling Ebola, though MS Vinson and others -- including President Barack Obama -- stressed the fight against the deadly virus isn't over.

Dr. Craig Spencer is now the only person in the United States being treated for Ebola. The 33-year-old was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York City after developing a fever on Thursday, six days after returning to the United States and over a week after leaving Guinea, where he worked for Doctors Without Borders.

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http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/28/health/us-ebola/
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WASHINGTON POST   GRAPHICS 
                        
Seven people were treated and declared Ebola-free; one died.  Here is a look at the nine U.S. Ebola patients:

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/status-of-us-ebola-cases/1406/

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Obama Defends C.D.C.’s Ebola Rules as ‘Sensible, Based in Science’

WHITE HOUSE SUPPORTS CDC GUIDELINES FOR CIVILIANS, EXPLAINS DIFFERENT TREATMENT FOR U.S. TROOPS

NEW YORK TIMES                                                              Oct. 28, 2014
By

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday said that new Ebola guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were “sensible, based in science” and would help keep Americans safe while not discouraging volunteers from traveling to West Africa to battle the disease at its source....

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Seeking Unity, U.S. Revises Ebola Monitoring Rules

UPDATE WITH DETAILS OF MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA MONITORING  (Scroll down)

ROUNDUP OF DEVELOPMENTS IN THE QUARANTINE  DISPUTE
NEW YORK TIMES                        Oct. 28, 2014

By , and

The federal government on Monday tried to take charge of an increasingly acrimonious national debate over how to treat people in contact with Ebola patients by announcing guidelines that stopped short of tough measures in New York and New Jersey and were carefully devised, officials said, not to harm the effort to recruit badly needed medical workers to West Africa.

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Quarantine debate turning into a chaotic brawl

THE WASHINGTON POST                    0ct, 27, 2014
By Joel Achenbach, Brady Dennis and Lena H. Sun

The Ebola quarantine controversy has become a chaotic brawl involving politics, science and the law. The rules on quarantining health-care workers returning from West Africa are changing almost daily and varying according to geography and political climate.

The Pentagon announced Monday that Army personnel returning to their home base in Italy from Liberia will be held in quarantine for 21 days — even though none have symptoms of Ebola or were exposed to patients infected with the virus.

The military’s policy does not appear to track new guidelines announced Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which called for “high-risk” individuals and health-care workers without any symptoms to be directly monitored by state and local health authorities.

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The Flu, TB and Now Ebola: A Rare Legal Remedy Returns

Discussion of the legal and civil liberties issues involved in quarantines

NEW YORK TIMES                                  Oct. 27, 2014

By and N

It was nearly 100 years ago that an influenza pandemic led to sweeping quarantines in American cities, and it was more than two decades ago that patients in New York were forced into isolation after an outbreak of tuberculosis.

In modern America, public health actions of such gravity are remarkably rare. So the decisions by New York and New Jersey on Friday to quarantine some travelers returning from the Ebola zone in West Africa have taken public officials into unfamiliar legal and medical territory...

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Insurance companies now write Ebola exclusions into policies; offer Ebola-related products

HOMELAND SECURITY NEWS WIRE                Oct. 27, 2014

U.S. and British insurance companies have begun to write Ebola exclusions into their policies for hospitals, event organizers, airliners, and other businesses vulnerable to disruption from the disease.

As a result, new policies and renewals will become more expensive for firms looking to insure business travel to West Africa or to cover the risk of losses from Ebola-driven business interruptions (BI).The cost of insuring an event against Ebola, for example, would likely be triple the amount of normal cancellation insurance — if the venue was in a region not known to be affected by the virus.

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http://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20141027-insurance-companies-now-write-ebola-exclusions-into-policies-offer-ebolarelated-products

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Quarantined Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox to Be Released by New Jersey

ABC NEWS                                          Oct. 27, 2014

by Josh Margolin

 

NEWARK --New Jersey has decided to release a nurse who was fighting an order that forcibly quarantined her after she returned from Africa where she treated Ebola patients.

The release was announced this morning after Kaci Hickox, hired a lawyer to sue over her mandatory 21-day quarantine. Shortly before the decision by the New Jersey Health Department, the nurse said she hopes "this nightmare of mine and the fight that I’ve undertaken is not in vain.”

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White House Presses States to Reconsider Mandatory Ebola Quarantine Orders

UPDATE:    Under Pressure, Cuomo Loosens Policy for Ebola Quarantines in New York

NEW YORK TIMES                                                             Oct. 26, 2014

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New York doctor with Ebola gets blood transfusion from aid worker who survived disease

FOX NEWS                                Oct. 26, 2014

Doctors treating New York City’s first Ebola patient have given the ailing doctor a transfusion of blood plasma from an aid worker who was infected with the deadly disease in West Africa and survived.

Dr. Craig Spencer received the donated plasma Friday from Nancy Writebol, a health care worker with the Christian organization SIM. Writebol was treated in August at Emory Hospital in Georgia.

Bellevue Hospital, where Spencer is being treated, said Saturday evening that the 33-year-old physician is “entering the next phase of his illness as anticipated with the appearance of gastrointestinal symptoms.”

The public hospital said in a statement that the patient is “awake and communicating.”

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http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/10/26/new-york-doctor-with-ebola-gets-blood-transfusion-from-aid-worker-who-survived/

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