This NYC incident might give us some useful information about Ebola spread and it might not. It would be helpful if the CDC would deploy some rapid first responder teams for residence cleanup which would measure Ebola loads in those before they are decontaminated. All local authorities should do prior to then is seal the residences off.
The public really needs data from which the fomite threat can be estimated.
So true, Thud. If this isn’t being done currently, why not?
the verdict was about changing the time on a chart of when the patient said they ate which was important to amount of anesthesia-bottom line the doctor lied to protect malpractice..so nothing would surprise me in real life.
Overall, certainly, and in this particular case, definitely.
From the aspect of first responders and health care workers, knowing if there had been viral shedding taking place in the man's apartment would indicate the likelihood of a threat in the wild.
If no virus was detected in the apartment, then that might indicate a low probability of fomite threat (not zero, but low), but that threat would increase if detectable amounts of virus were found.
What is the lower detection limit for the virus using current detection methods for fomites? (can those methods detect ID50 viral loads in a timely fashion?) Are there accepted techniques for evaluating contamination in the wild? What methodology is used if there are?