The new plan for treating any future Ebola patients in North Texas is ready to run, even as the odds are improving it will not be needed.
Methodist Health System's Campus for Continuing Care on Campbell Road in Richardson is the location designated by Gov. Rick Perry Tuesday for a North Texas Ebola treatment center.
The unit is ready to operate, said Dr. Sam Bagchi, Methodist Health System Chief Quality Officer.
Bagchi said a positive patient test result for Ebola at another hospital would activate the unit in Richardson.
Parkland Hospital and UT Southwestern Medical Center will provide staff to help operate the treatment center. Bagchi said all the necessary people could be in place within 12 hours notice.
Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said other hospitals in the region must still be prepared to accept possible Ebola patients and put them in temporary isolation.
“All of them need to be ready because people might wander in without an ambulance,” Jenkins said. “Ambulance drivers are being directed to take West African travel history fevers to [Texas Health] Presbyterian [Hospital Dallas] until further notice.”
Presbyterian Hospital is where Ebola was first reported in the United States with Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died there Oct. 8.
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Presbyterian nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson somehow contracted the disease while caring for Duncan, and the nurses were transferred to treatment locations in other states before the new Methodist Richardson location was established.
As of Thursday, 109 possible Texas contacts of the three patients were still being monitored for possible Ebola symptoms.
The number of people being monitored for a 21-day possible incubation period will decline over the next two weeks, through Nov. 7, depending on when they last had contact with one of the Ebola patients.
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“We are winning the battle against Ebola here in Dallas, but the battle is not over and we’ve got to stay vigilant until it is,” Jenkins said.
Duncan’s fiancée and her family completed monitoring Sunday, but she is still looking for a new permanent home after the apartment where Duncan had been staying was decontaminated and most of the family's possessions were incinerated.
