Lawmakers grill health officials on flawed Ebola response

Senior health officials defended the government’s response to Ebola at a tense hearing Thursday on Capitol Hill, as lawmakers accused them of underestimating the danger posed by the deadly disease and flubbing procedures to contain its spread in the United States.

“With no vaccine or cure we are facing down a disease for which there is no room for error,” said Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa., who chaired the hearing. “We cannot afford to look back at this point in history and say we could have done more. Errors in judgment have been made, and it is our immediate responsibility today to learn from those errors, correct them rapidly and move forward effectively.”

Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Murphy and other lawmakers that his agency is working 24-7 to protect Americans, but “there are no shortcuts in the control of Ebola.”

He added, “To protect the United States we have to stop it at the source” in West Africa.

Frieden testified Thursday along with other federal and state officials before a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation.

Frieden acknowledged that lawmakers have “a lot of understandable concerns about the cases in Dallas,” including about how health care workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas initially misdiagnosed the first patient, Thomas Duncan, and how two nurses who treated Duncan became infected despite following safety protocols.

The CDC is working to identify and learn lessons from those three cases, he said.

But Frieden had trouble answering some specific questions from lawmakers, who grilled him on what protective gear the nurses wore and why one of them, Amber Vinson, was allowed to board an airplane from Dallas to Cleveland.

Murphy asked Frieden whether he could confirm reports that Vinson had called the CDC to report a slight fever before getting on the plane.

“My understanding is that she did contact CDC and we discussed with her her reported symptoms as well as her plan to fly,” Frieden replied.

Republicans on the committee also pressed Frieden to explain why the government hasn’t imposed a travel ban from the countries in West Africa affected by the Ebola outbreak: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

“If other countries are doing this . . . why cannot we move to a similar ban for folks who may or may not have a fever?” asked Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. “It seems to me that this is not a fail-safe system that has been put in place here.”

Frieden said a travel ban isn’t practical – travelers intent on entering the U.S. would simply do so through different countries. That would be more risky to the U.S. public because under the current system, he said, travelers from West Africa provide contact information so U.S. authorities can find them while they’re in the country.

“Right now we know who is coming in,” he said. “If we try to eliminate travel, the possibility is that people will travel overland or from other places. . . . We won’t be able to check them for fever.”

Daniel Varga, the chief clinical officer and senior executive vice president of Texas Health Resources, the company that owns the hospital, apologized for not correctly diagnosing Duncan and for providing inaccurate information about his case.

“Unfortunately, in our initial treatment of Mr. Duncan, despite our best intentions and a highly skilled medical team, we made mistakes,” said Varga, who testified via video link from Texas. “We are deeply sorry.”

Later Thursday, under pressure to select an Ebola “czar” to lead the U.S. response against the disease, President Obama conceded Thursday it “may be appropriate for me to appoint an additional person” to head the administration effort.

This story was originally published October 16, 2014 at 8:37 PM with the headline "Lawmakers grill health officials on flawed Ebola response."