Chief of Texas Hospital System Apologizes for Lapses in Ebola Care

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 WASHINGTON — The head of the Texas hospital system that treated a Liberian Ebola patient apologized for what he said were mistakes made by the hospital in Dallas in the original diagnosis of Ebola and in providing inaccurate information.The remarks, part of prepared testimony for a congressional hearing later Thursday, came a day after a second nurse in Dallas was found to have Ebola. Her diagnosis came after she had taken a flight, prompting health officials to track down other passengers and include them in a growing list of people being monitored for symptoms.Ebola is one of the world’s most lethal diseases, but is contagious only through contact with bodily fluids and health officials say it is highly unlikely that the passengers were at risk. The two nurses infected were both on the team that treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who flew into Dallas last month and was later admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.
In the prepared remarks, Dr. Daniel Varga, the chief clinical officer for Texas Health Resources, the medical group that oversees Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, said that “unfortunately, in our initial treatment of Mr. Duncan, despite our best intentions and a highly skilled medical team we made mistakes.”He added: “We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola. We are deeply sorry.”The hearing on the public health response to Ebola will be held by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Others scheduled to testify include Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has been at the center of the American response to the outbreak, both in the United States and in Africa, where the number of cases is doubling every month.
Dr. Varga also gave a few new details about the early days of care provided to Mr. Duncan, a period that is reported to have been marked by some confusion and is potentially when the nurses became infected.On Tuesday, a union representing nurses accused hospital authorities of lacking strict protocols for protective equipment, and alleged that the suits they were given left skin exposed. They said Mr. Duncan had initially been left for several hours in an area around other patients.“There was no advanced preparedness on what to do with the patient, there was no protocol, there was no system,” unnamed nurses at the hospital said in a statement released by the union, National Nurses United.In his prepared testimony, Dr. Varga said that Mr. Duncan “met several of the criteria of the Ebola algorithm,” when he arrived at the hospital on Sept. 28, and that the C.D.C. was notified at that time. He said C.D.C. protocols for basic protective gear had been followed although on Wednesday he had acknowledged that workers did not start wearing full biohazard suits for two days. He also said in his prepared remarks that, since the patient was having diarrhea, “shoe covers were added shortly thereafter,” implying that caretakers had not initially been wearing them.