More guidance in handling Ebola

ATLANTA

- Revised guidance for health-care workers treating Ebola patients will include using protective gear "with no skin showing," a top federal health official said yesterday, and the Pentagon announced it was forming a team to assist medical staff in the U.S., if needed.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said those caring for an Ebola patient in Dallas were vulnerable because some of their skin was exposed.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working on revisions to safety protocols. Earlier ones, he said, were based on a World Health Organization model in which care was given in more remote places, often outdoors, and without intensive training for health workers.

"So there were parts about that protocol that left vulnerability, parts of the skin that were open," Fauci said.

Health officials had previously allowed hospitals some flexibility to use available covering when dealing with suspected Ebola patients. The new guidelines are expected to set a firmer standard: calling for full-body suits and hoods that protect worker's necks, setting rigorous rules for removal of equipment and disinfection of hands, and calling for a "site manager" to supervise the putting on and taking off of equipment.

The guidelines are also expected to require a "buddy system," in which workers check each other as they come in and go out, according to an official who was familiar with the guidelines but not authorized to discuss them before their release.

Hospital workers also will be expected to exhaustively practice getting in and out of the equipment, the official said.

The American Nurses Association and other groups have called for better guidance that sets clearer standards on what kind of equipment, how to put it on and how to take it off.

The push stems from the infection of two nurses at a Dallas hospital who treated an Ebola-infected patient named Thomas Eric Duncan - the first person diagnosed with the virus in the U.S.

The nurses, Nina Pham and Amber Joy Vinson, were diagnosed with Ebola less than a week later. Officials say how they were infected remains a mystery.