First U.S. case of Ebola diagnosed in Texas

Oct 1 2014

The patient, who reportedly took a Sept. 20 commercial flight from Liberia to Dallas, represents the first case in the current outbreak diagnosed outside of Africa. Public health officials were quick to quiet fears, saying the U.S. health care system is well-equipped to control the disease's spread.

The New York Times: Ebola Is Diagnosed In Texas, First Case Found In The U.S.
A man who took a commercial flight from Liberia that landed in Dallas on Sept. 20 has been found to have the Ebola virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Tuesday. He is the first traveler to have brought the virus to the United States on a passenger plane and the first in whom Ebola has been diagnosed outside of Africa in the current outbreak (Grady, 9/30).

The Washington Post: First U.S. Case Of Ebola Diagnosed In Texas After Man Who Came From Liberia Falls Ill
Experts had said that such an event was increasingly likely the longer the epidemic rages in West Africa. But health officials were quick Tuesday to tamp down any hysteria, emphasizing the ways in which the U.S. medical system is well equipped to halt the spread of the disease. "We're stopping it in its tracks in this country," Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said during a news conference Tuesday afternoon (Berman, Dennis and Izadi, 9/30).

The Wall Street Journal: First Case Of Ebola In U.S. Is Confirmed
Confirmation of the individual's illness was made by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Texas Department of State Health Services on Tuesday. Officials have now launched an intensive medical and public-health effort both to treat the sick individual and to identify and monitor those people who he may have exposed to the disease in the four days between when he first developed symptoms and when he was placed into hospital isolation. The patient isn't the first to be treated for Ebola in the U.S. But he is the first to have become ill here, raising concerns that others may get sick, too, and spark an outbreak (McKay and Campoy, 10/1).

NPR: First U.S. Case Of Ebola Confirmed In Dallas
The CDC has been planning for an Ebola case in the U.S., Frieden said. And the agency, together with state health departments, has successfully dealt with similar viruses -; Lassa and Marburg -; on five previous occasions. "The bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will control this importation, or case of Ebola," he said, "so that it does not spread widely in this country" (Doucleff, 9/30).

CNN: 1st Ebola Diagnosis In The United States: Is There Reason To Worry?
But shortly after the news broke Tuesday evening, more than 50,000 tweets about Ebola flew through Twitter in a one-hour period, many of them panicked responses. Should we be concerned? The short answer: no (Yan, 10/1).