Thomas Eric Duncan has been identified as the first patient with the Ebola virus in the United States.
He was visiting family in Dallas, Texas after contracting the disease while in Liberia just days ago.
Duncan has been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital since Sunday. He was listed in serious but stable condition Wednesday, reported the Associated Press.
Duncan is originally from Monrovia, Liberia, according to his Facebook profile. He currently lives in Accra, Ghana.
Duncan appears to have a son, Eric Duncan, who lives in Dallas, Texas. Duncan’s sister lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The New York Times says that Duncan is in his mid-40s. While he lists Accra as his residence, it says he still lives in Monrovia.
Parents of a woman who has Ebola say that he had direct contact with her on September 15, just four days before he left Liberia for the United States. Duncan rode in a taxi to a hospital to help the woman, Marthalene Williams, 19, when she began showing symptoms of the disease. Duncan is described as a family friend. He then helped carry Williams back to the family home that evening.
“He was holding her by the legs, the pa was holding her arms and Sonny Boy was holding her back,” said Arren Seyou, 31, who witnessed what happens and lives next to Duncan. Sonny Boy, 21, started getting sick about a week ago, around the same time that Duncan started showing victims. Sonny Boy later died.
Duncan often told neighbors that his son lived in the U.S. and was trying to get him to America. Duncan worked as a driver at Safeway Cargo for the past year before quitting recently.
After arriving in the U.S., Duncan may have come into contact with five children from four different schools, according to the Dallas Independent School District.
The schools are Emmett J. Conrad High School, Sam Tasby Middle School, L.L. Hotchkiss Elementary School and Dan D. Rogers Elementary.
“The impacted students are currently not showing any symptoms and are under close observation by the Dallas County Health and Human Services Department,” it said.
“As a precautionary measure, the students have been advised to stay home from school. Since the students are not presenting any symptoms, there is nothing to suggest that the disease was spread to others including students and staff.”
Officials are also monitoring about 12 other people who may have been exposed, including some members of his family, and three members of the ambulance crew that took the man to the hospital.
They will be checked every day for 21 days, the disease’s incubation period.
“That’s how we’re going to break the chain of transmission, and that’s where our focus has to be,” Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on Wednesday.
The CDC reminded the nation’s health care providers to ask patients with symptoms if they’ve traveled recently. The American College of Emergency Physicians planned to alert its members as well.
United Airlines said in a statement on Wednesday that the CDC told it that Duncan flew on United Flight 951 from Brussels to Dulles Airport near Washington, before boarding Flight 822 from Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A Belgian official says the man flew from Liberia to Brussels on Brussels Airlines.
But health officials say there is no risk of infection among other passengers because the man, Duncan, had no symptoms when he flew. He sought medical care Sept. 24 in Dallas.
Apparently Duncan went to a Dallas emergency room last week but was sent home, despite telling a nurse that he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa.
The decision by Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to release the patient, who had recently arrived from Liberia, could have put others at risk of exposure to Ebola before the man went back to the ER a couple of days later, when his condition worsened.
The patient explained to a nurse last Thursday that he was visiting the U.S. from Africa, but that information was not widely shared, said Dr. Mark Lester, who works for the hospital’s parent company.
“Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated” throughout the medical team, Lester said. Instead, the man was diagnosed with a low-risk infection and sent home.
He was prescribed antibiotics, according to his sister, Mai Wureh.
Duncan has been kept in isolation at the hospital since Sunday. He was listed in serious but stable condition.
Hospital epidemiologist Dr. Edward Goodman said the patient had a fever and abdominal pain during his first ER visit, not the riskier symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea.
But the diagnosis, and the hospital’s slip-up, highlighted the wider threat of Ebola, even in places far from West Africa.
“The scrutiny just needs to be higher now,” said Dr. Rade Vukmir, a spokesman for the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Ebola is believed to have sickened more than 7,100 people in West Africa and killed more than 3,300, according to the World Health Organization. Liberia is one of the three hardest-hit countries in the epidemic, along with Sierra Leone and Guinea.
In Texas, neither the ambulance crew nor the children showed any symptoms. They were restricted to home while their conditions are observed. It was not exactly clear how Duncan knew the children, but his sister said he had been visiting with family, including two nephews.
Ebola symptoms can include fever, muscle pain, vomiting and bleeding, and can appear as long as 21 days after exposure to the virus. The disease is not contagious until symptoms begin. It spreads only by close contact with a patient’s bodily fluids.
The CDC sent a team to Monrovia’s airport on Wednesday to make sure health officials there are screening passengers properly. All people traveling from the outbreak zone are supposed to be checked for fever and asked about their travel history before being allowed to leave. Plastic buckets filled with chlorinated water for hand-washing are present throughout the airport.
“There were no signs of any disease when the gentleman boarded the flight,” said Dr. Tom Kenyon, director of the CDC’s Center for Global Health. “This was not a failure of the screening process at the airport.”
Since the man was showing no symptoms on the plane, the CDC stressed that there is no risk to fellow passengers.
Tests designed to detect the virus in the bloodstream are not typically performed on people who don’t yet have symptoms, because tests done too early may miss the diagnosis, Frieden said.
“Even in the initial phases of illness, when they’ve got a fever, the most sensitive tests in the world don’t detect it because there’s so little virus that they have,” he said. “It’s only as they become sicker that they become more infectious.”
Hospitals have been on the lookout: The CDC has received 94 inquiries from states about illnesses that initially were suspected to be Ebola, but after taking travel histories and doing some other work, most were ruled out. Of the 13 people who actually underwent testing, only one — the Dallas patient — tested positive.
The Dallas apartment complex where Duncan was believed to be staying was cordoned off Wednesday, and the management was turning away visitors. TV cameras lined the fence of the parking lot, and at least one helicopter hovered overhead.
Four American aid workers who became infected in West Africa have been flown back to the U.S. for treatment after they became sick. Three have recovered.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified Duncan. Epoch Times regrets the error.