MADRID — Spain’s Ebola patient showed some marginal signs of recovery Sunday but European infectious diseases experts found shortcomings that need fixing in the Madrid hospital designated to deal with Ebola cases, officials said Sunday.
Assistant nurse Teresa Romero, who was infected with the Ebola in a Madrid hospital after having contact with two Spanish missionaries who later died from the virus, is showing signs of “slight improvement,” a government statement said.
But the statement also said that Romero’s prognosis remains serious and further complications can’t be ruled out.
The statement added that a committee from the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control who visited Madrid’s Carlos III hospital concluded that it wasn’t suitable to meet emergencies such as an Ebola outbreak...Fernando Simon, the Health Ministry’s coordinator of emergency alerts, said one sign for optimism was that “the virus load” in Romero’s bloodstream was decreasing.
Simon told a news conference at Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s official residence that he had met with the two-man European communicable disease threats committee and been told of its concerns.
He said the area that needed to be improved was the airlocks leading into and out of the quarantine area at the Carlos III hospital.
“The airlocks were set up to deal with highly infectious situations, but what hadn’t been foreseen was a need for bulky outfits to perform certain medical procedures in,” Simon said.
He said the airlocks had been deemed too tight for such protective apparel.
Health authorities have said they suspected Romero may have become infected when she accidentally touched her face with a gloved hand while taking off protective gear in a small airlock.

WASHINGTON – House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul called again Sunday for barring entry into the United States for people from countries wresting with the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

“We need to target more the individual themselves and look at the idea of potentially temporarily suspending the 13,000 visas that would be coming out of this region,” the Austin Republican told CBS’ Face the Nation.

McCaul held a field hearing at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Friday, after calling for a travel ban on Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Other Texas lawmakers and a number of conservative advocates have also demanded a travel ban. So have a handful of congressional Democrats.

Texas Department of State Health Services commissioner Dr. David Lakey confirmed that the new Ebola patient in Dallas was not among the 48 individuals who were initially thought to have been at potential risk of contamination from that "index patient," Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last Wednesday.

ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser recently returned from the Ebola hot zone in Liberia. He said Sunday morning that if the new Ebola case reported in Dallas is confirmed, it is a "very concerning" development....Besser said he does not agree with the Centers for Disease Control, which says any U.S. hospital can safely care for an Ebola patient.

"To do it safely, health care workers need to train and practice using protective equipment like they have been doing at the Emory and Nebraska facilities," he said, referring to special biocontainment units at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta — where Fort Worth physician Kent Brantly was treated for Ebola exposure; and the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where an NBC photojournalist is currently being cared for. "I would never have gone into an Ebola ward in Africa without being dressed and decontaminated by experts — health care workers here should expect no less."

Public health is the purview of the states, and as the nation anticipates more Ebola cases, some experts say the way the United States handles public health is not up to the challenge.

"One of the things we have to understand is the federal, state and local public health relationships," says Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. "Public health is inherently a state issue. The state really is in charge of public health at the state and local level. It's a constitutional issue. "

staffed by officials from Dallas County, the city of Dallas, the CDC, the county and state health departments and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, among others.

This was the team that made decisions on matters such as isolating people who had been in direct contact with Duncan, including his fiancée, Louise Troh, her teenage son and two other male relatives. Because they were not sick, they couldn't technically be quarantined, Jenkins said Friday. Instead, Lakey issued a "control order" to keep them at home, where they could be monitored for signs of Ebola.

DALLAS — Within hours after a test indicated that an employee at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital had contracted the Ebola virus, Dallas officials knocked on doors, made automated phone calls and passed out fliers to notify people within a four-block radius of the health care worker's apartment complex about the situation, though they said there was no reason for neighbors to be concerned.

Dallas police officers stood guard outside the complex on Marquita Avenue Sunday and told people not to go inside. One said an industrial barrel outside contained hazardous waste taken from inside the building...By mid afternoon, a representative of CG Environmental spoke with reporters to say that a team of 15 hazardous materials workers would begin decontaminating the apartment of the hospital worker who fell ill.

The same company was contracted to disinfect the Dallas apartment where Thomas Eric Duncan, the nation's first Ebola patient, had stayed.