US Ebola Patient Vomited 'All Over' Outside Apartment

 
The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the US is now in isolation, but a Texas health official is telling KHOU this morning that more than 80 people came into at least indirect contact with Liberian national Thomas Duncan. Of those, four or five are being monitored closely and have been told not to leave home. Also troubling, residents of Dallas' Ivy Apartments, where Duncan was staying with family, describe a chaotic scene as Duncan was led to an ambulance that would take him to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital: "His whole family was screaming," a 21-year-old resident tells Reuters. "He got outside and he was throwing up all over the place."

That scene might have been avoided if not for "a mistake" that sent Duncan home after a hospital visit on Sept. 26, his nephew says. Two days later, "I called CDC to get some actions taken, because I was concerned for his life," Josephus Weeks tells NBC News. He says the CDC put him in contact with the Texas Department of Health and Human Services, which moved on the case. Five children who were attending school earlier this week are also being monitored. They "did not have any symptoms and so the odds of them passing on any sort of virus is very low," says a superintendent. Their schools will now be staffed with health professionals. Duncan had recently traveled from Liberia and may have acquired the virus from a woman in a cab.