NBC News cameraman diagnosed with Ebola and station’s chief medical correspondent put in quarantine: News team flown back to U.S. from Liberia in new deadly virus scare
A cameraman working for NBC News in Liberia has become the fourth American to contract the deadly Ebola virus.
The 33-year-old unnamed journalist is being flown privately back to the U.S. for treatment, while the network’s chief medical editor and correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman and the rest of her team are also returning and will be placed in 
quarantine for 21 days.
Neither Snyderman nor the other members of her team are currently displaying any signs of the disease, said NBC.
The infected journalist, who hasn’t been named, was only hired this week to be a second cameraman for Snyderman, who has been reporting on the continuing Eboloa outbreak in the country’s capital Monrovia.
Snyderman has reported in recent days from a hospital in the city, where she witnessed a sick 17-year-old girl being brought in on a wheelbarrow by her mother.
‘We are doing everything we can to get him the best care possible. He will be flown back to the United States for treatment at a medical center that is equipped to handle Ebola patients,’ said NBC News President Deborah Turness said in a note to staff concerning the sick journalist.
‘The rest of the crew, including Dr. Nancy, are being closely monitored and show no symptoms or warning signs,’ she added.
‘However, in an abundance of caution, we will fly them back on a private charter flight and then they will place themselves under quarantine in the United States for 21 days – which is at the most conservative end of the spectrum of medical guidance.’
Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday evening, Dr Snyderman said that just the previous day the cameraman had appeared healthy when they were required to have their temperatures taken as a border crossing.
At that time his temperature was considered normal, but as the day progressed he felt tired and achy and went to get some rest.
After he discovered that he was running a slight fever, he immediately quarantined himself and sought medical advice.
On Thursday morning, he went to a Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) treatment center to be tested for the virus and received the positive result just under 12 hours later.
Dr. Snyderman told Maddow that while she and the rest of her team feel very healthy ‘we have to be extraordinarily vigilant. We are obviously respectful of this virus which has killed so many,’ she said.
She added that she and her crew were going above and beyond even the CDC’s guidelines in their handling of their own health.
‘We recognize that there is a big story back home,’ she said. ‘And, frankly, we want to be respectful to our colleagues and to the American public.’
The cameraman is the fourth American to have contracted Ebola in Liberia.
Aid workers Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol were infected in July while working for Samaritan’s Purse in Monrovia. Last month, Dr. Rick Sacra was diagnosed with the virus after working at a local hospital in Liberia.
NBC News is withholding the cameraman’s name at the request of his family. He has been working in the country for the past three years.
His diagnosis is believed to mark the first time an American journalist has been diagnosed with the deadly disease since the current outbreak in west Africa.
‘In this part of Africa, it is out of control, and it remains the belly of the beast,’ Snyderman had reported on Thursday morning on Today.
Ebola has now killed over 3,300 people across West Africa.
Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan is currently being treated for Ebola at a hospital in Dallas, Texas.
Up to 100 people in Texas are believed to have had contact with Duncan since he developed symptoms of the deadly virus last Thursday at 10pm.
Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital earlier reported that Mr Duncan had come for treatment on Friday – but the new timeline adds an extra day to how long he was out in public.
The patient’s quarantined girlfriend Louise told CNN on Thursday that she had not been told what to do with the soiled linens used by Mr Duncan when he was ill and had not been given food.
The woman has been legally ordered to stay inside her Dallas apartment with her 13-year-old child and two nephews, who are both in their twenties, as they came in direct contact with Mr Duncan.
None of the four people quarantined are showing Ebola symptoms but Louise, who works as a home healthcare aide, has been taking the group’s temperature every hour.
Among the 12 people being closely monitored were five children – who attend four area schools.
Panic-stricken parents in the area pulled their kids out of classes after they received Ebola fact sheets and notes which said ‘everything is fine’. Schools were also scrubbed down and extra nurses brought in to monitor any students with fevers or flu-like symptoms.
The CDC jumped into action on Thursday afternoon, sending a contract team to clear the bedding, provide food and power-wash the apartment complex – a full four days after Mr Duncan was rushed to hospital in an ambulance after suffering vomiting, diarrhea, fever and sweating.
On Thursday afternoon, it was revealed that four sheriff’s deputies, a health director and a doctor, went into the quarantined apartment without protection, NBC5 reported.
Two Douglas County Sheriff’s Office patrol cars have now been cordoned off and the deputies have been told to seal their uniforms in bags and go home.
Mr Duncan arrived from Liberia, an Ebola ‘hot zone’ in West Africa, on September 20. He began to develop Ebola symptoms – the point when the disease becomes contagious – on September 23.
He was sent home from his first hospital trip with antibiotics despite telling two medical staff he had flown in from Liberia. His partner Louise said she doesn’t believe he left the apartment in this time but she cannot be certain because she was at work.
His condition deteriorated and he was rushed to hospital via ambulance on Sunday and quarantined.
However it was alleged on Thursday that Mr Duncan lied on an airport questionnaire about not having any contact with an infected person, authorities said on Thursday.
Mr Duncan filled out a series of questions about his health and activities before leaving on his journey to Dallas, Texas on September 19. On the form he answered no to every question.
Among other questions, the form asked whether Duncan had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of anyone who had died in an area affected by Ebola.
The New York Times reported on Wednesday that Mr Duncan had helped carried a neighbor’s pregnant daughter who was dying from Ebola.
The Liberian government said on Thursday that it planned to prosecute Mr Duncan over the lies while the country’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf told CBC today that she was ‘very angry’ that Mr Duncan had left Liberia after being exposed to Ebola and that his actions were ‘unpardonable’.
President Sirleaf also said that she hoped that no one else would contract the potentially deadly virus which has ravaged her country.
And despite Duncan spreading Ebola to the U.S., a U.N. spokesman said on Thursday that air travel to and from the West African countries affected by the Ebola virus should continue.
It also appears that Mr Duncan did not mention his close contact with a severe case of Ebola to his partner Louise, with whom he has one child.
She told CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a telephone interview on Thursday that the couple did not discuss Ebola and she initially thought Duncan had malaria when she brought him to Texas Presbyterian.
Louise does not believe she has Ebola because she did not come in contact with bodily fluids. She said Mr Duncan was ‘prideful’ in taking care of himself when he became sick.
She also did not believe he had thrown up repeatedly outside the apartment on Sunday, as a neighbor reported, and wished to reassure her neighbors.
Meanwhile, the number of family members who came in contact with Mr Duncan while he was contagious remains unclear, CNN reported.
Louise’s daughter, who does not live at the quarantined apartment, was the person who called an ambulance for Mr Duncan on Sunday after she came to her mother’s home to bring him tea and found him feverish and shivering.
It is unclear if she traveled with him in the ambulance or came in close contact with the infected man.
Louise told CNN that she has other children, who are not currently living at the home but elsewhere in Dallas and also a son at college. They had not come in contact with Mr Duncan, she said.
The family who are isolated in the apartment have been told they face criminal charges if they leave the apartment or accept visitors.
Dallas Judge Clay Jenkins told ABC today that a legal quarantine order was placed on the home after the family tried to break out of the apartment.
However MailOnline reported on Wednesday that three individuals – a man in his twenties with a roll of garbage bags and two women – came and left the apartment.
Louise said that she has been given no instructions by the Center for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) on how to dispose of the contaminated bedding in the home or what the family would do for food.
She said that two CDC workers who visited the home on Wednesday brought sandwiches but they had no other food.
At a press conference on Thursday afternoon, Judge Jenkins was quick to respond to those claims, saying that several days supply of food was being delivered to the quarantined group and contaminated material would be removed by biohazard experts.
He added that the family were being treated with the ‘utmost respect and dignity’.
The Red Cross were seen delivering food on Thursday to the family’s second story apartment.
A young man, who appeared to be one of the adult nephews under quarantine, appeared on the balcony to bring the food inside, dressed in a T-shirt bearing the logo ‘YOLO – You Only Live Once’.
Mr Duncan’s partner Louise told CNN on Thursday that she is very worried but keeps praying and has spoken Mr Duncan via telephone.
Texas health officials said around 100 people may have come into contact with Mr Duncan and they are being questioned.
Authorities have confirmed 12 people including five children had direct contact with Mr Duncan and are being closely monitored.
Some parents have pulled their children out of four affected Dallas schools after learning that five students may have come into contact with Mr Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S.
School administrators appealed for calm as none of the children have shown symptoms and are being told to stay at home, where they will likely remain for three weeks.
Parents and pupils at schools in Dallas where children were possibly infected with Ebola said that they were appalled at how the crisis was being handled.
The schools were named as Tasby Middle School, Dan D. Rogers Elementary, Lowe Elementary and Conrad High School.
Parents and students were only told on Wednesday that their schools had been affected – a day after the public were informed that a patient had the deadly virus.
They were given a letter and a fact sheet but were told it was ‘all fine’ and that children had to remain in school.
Daily Mail
