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In December, the WHO declared the end of Ebola transmission in Guinea. As of February 19, all U.S. enhanced screening and monitoring requirements for travelers returning from Guinea have been removed. This follows a CDC assessment that the risk of Ebola in travelers from Guinea is low. Travelers leaving from Guinea will still be screened [...]
On December 29, 2015, the WHO declared the end of Ebola virus transmission in Guinea, following up the declared end of the outbreak in Liberia in September and in Sierra Leone in November. This is the first time since the outbreak began two years ago the original chain of transmission has been halted. While sporadic [...]
Since October of 2014, local health departments have worked with ADHS, CDC, and other federal partners to monitor travelers returning from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea for signs and symptoms of Ebola. In total, around 200 travelers returning to Arizona have been monitored. Back in September, monitoring of travelers returning from Liberia ended, due to [...]
Throughout the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, local health departments in Arizona have worked with ADHS, CDC, and other federal partners to monitor travelers returning from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone for signs and symptoms of Ebola. Since October 17, local public health in Arizona has monitored more than 200 returning travelers. As disease prevention and [...]
The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is a federal law that requires hospitals that accept Medicare payments to provide emergency healthcare to anybody regardless of citizenship or immigration status or their ability to pay. Under the law, hospitals that accept Medicare payments can’t transfer or discharge patients that need emergency treatment unless [...]
There has been tremendous progress in controlling Ebola Virus Disease in West Africa in the last month. New Ebola cases have fallen sharply in the last few weeks to fewer than 100 per week. For the week ending January 25, there were 4 new cases in Liberia, 30 in Guinea and 65 in Sierra Leone. At [...]
A 2 year-old boy from Guinea appears to be what we call in our business the “Index Case” for the West African Ebola epidemic. In epidemiology, an Index Case is the first documented case of an illness that spreads to others. The 2 year-old appears to have been infected by playing in a hollow tree [...]
We held our first Governor’s Council on Infectious Disease Preparedness and Response meeting late last week. The Council outlined 2 priorities…identifying a hospital or hospitals in Arizona that would be responsible for treating any Ebola patient, and improving outreach to physicians across the state to ensure that they have the information needed to effectively identify [...]
Epidemiologists (aka disease investigators) use a number of tools to estimate the contagiousness and spread of a disease. One such tool is the R0 (R nought), which represents the average number of people one sick person will infect. It's calculated by estimating the chances of exposure, number of susceptible persons, length of contagious period, how the disease [...]
One of the roles we play in any outbreak is making sure that our partners in the state have all the information they need to respond to a situation and be safe in that response. I’ve posted about our continuing education of those partners, but now we’ve created a one-page stop for partner. Our Ebola [...]
