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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Area health officials reviewing Ebola protocols

Health officials in the Spokane area and North Idaho said it’s unlikely Ebola will spread here – but they’re preparing just in case.

Public health workers and hospitals are reviewing protocols designed to prevent infection and checking stocks of medical workers’ “personal protective equipment” – gloves, goggles, face shields and fluid-resistant gowns.

They’ve also added Ebola screening in hospital emergency departments, asking patients who show up with fevers about their travel histories or contact with others who’ve traveled.

“It’s highly unlikely” the disease will show up in the region, said Dale Peck, incident commander at Panhandle Health District, which covers Idaho’s five northern counties. “But you never not prepare for something that could be terribly serious. We are taking it very seriously.”

That means also providing information about protocols to hospitals, ambulance services and law enforcement, Peck said.

Police could be called upon to enforce a quarantine of a possibly infected patient, he said: “We have legal authority to enforce that, if necessary.”

If Ebola spreads in the United States, there’s no saying where it would go, said Dr. Joel McCullough, Spokane County’s public health officer.

He added, however, that the probability of the disease spreading beyond the small group of health care workers in Dallas is “extremely low.”

Ebola arrived in Dallas with Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who wasn’t showing symptoms when his plane landed. And as public health officials continued to monitor more than 100 people who might have been exposed to Ebola through Duncan, reports emerged this week that the second nurse who caught the disease from Duncan flew to Ohio on a commercial airliner before her diagnosis.

While the CDC initially downplayed the risk of exposure to other passengers, Frontier Airlines said Thursday it was notifying passengers on seven flights that they either flew with the nurse or on a later flight using the same plane. Health officials are investigating if the nurse began to exhibit symptoms during her trip.

“It’s totally random in terms of whether any community will get Ebola showing up,” said McCullough, chief medical officer for the Spokane Regional Health District. “It’s still low probability for most communities. … But it’s pretty random. We wouldn’t have thought of Dallas as having the first Ebola cases here.”

Also among precautions: Workers at Spokane International Airport met with a public health official this week to review their plan in case a plane with a suddenly sick passenger had to be diverted there.

They’d start by sending the plane to a designated spot on airport property and separating out passengers who might have made contact with the sick person, said Susan Sjoberg, manager of the Spokane health district’s Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response team.

Five hospitals in the U.S., including Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and a hospital in Missoula, have signed agreements with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to care for Ebola patients such as American health care workers airlifted from West Africa.

But it’s up to public health officials and hospitals to make sure they’re ready for infected patients close to home, McCullough said.

“One of the main points, like we’ve seen in Dallas, is that Ebola can show up at your doorsteps without warning,” he said. “(Patients are) not just going to go to university medical centers. They’re going to go where they live – the closest hospital.”

Hospitals in Spokane and throughout Eastern Washington are prepared for Ebola patients, Sjoberg said – although smaller, rural facilities might need to transfer such patients to larger facilities.

Providence Sacred Heart and Holy Family hospitals are focusing on screening patients for possible infection and ramping up training on personal protective equipment – especially for employees who’d provide direct care for an Ebola patient, said Peg Currie, regional chief nursing officer for Providence Health Care, in a written statement.

They’re also working to make sure that employees get accurate, updated information about the disease and that hospital facilities get any needed equipment. For instance, they’re working to add telecommunications tools that would let an isolated patient communicate with family members from a distance.

Deaconess and Valley hospitals also are ready to follow infection-control protocols established by the CDC, starting with placing the patient in isolation, spokeswoman Jill Fix wrote in a statement.

Medical personnel who entered the room would be protected with personal protective equipment, and nonessential staff and visitors would be restricted from entering.

Ebola is spread through exposure to the blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person.

Along with the CDC, the Washington state Public Health Laboratories in Shoreline is among 13 facilities in the U.S. that can test for Ebola. Samples from a patient suspected of having the disease would be sent to the state lab for a quick response, with the CDC confirming the results.

After a sample is transported to the lab, results likely would be available within hours, McCullough said.

McCullough said hospitals already have most of the protective equipment they need, “because they usually have this level of protection for other infectious disease that they manage already. Most of it’s not new stuff.”

Fix said Deaconess and Valley have the equipment they need. Peck said North Idaho hospitals have the equipment they’d need for “initial contact” and could get more.

Currie, of Providence, said the hospitals are seeing some initial supply shortages looming.

“Gloves for instance, are looking like they may be in shorter supply because people are triple gloving thinking that will help,” she said. But they don’t have major concerns at this point, she said.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Health was planning to lead efforts, if necessary, to train waste haulers to dispose of medical waste related to Ebola patients.

The waste is usually incinerated, McCullough said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.