What's at issue is, is the "protocol" adequate?
CDC says THIS:
1) Are U.S. hospitals ready to care for patients with Ebola virus disease (EVD)? Yes – any U.S. hospital that is following CDC's infection control recommendations and can isolate a patient in a private room is capable of safely managing a patient with EVD. CDC recommends that U.S. hospitals isolate the patient in a private room and implement standard, contact, and droplet precautions.
2, 3, 4 omitted
5) Why do responders in Africa wear so much personal protective equipment (that can include full body suits) for this Ebola outbreak when CDC says hospitals here could safely manage the care of an Ebola patient without a full body suit? There are important differences between providing care or performing public health tasks in Africa versus in a U.S. hospital. In field medical settings, additional PPE may be necessary to protect healthcare workers. In some places in Africa, workers may not have the ability to prepare for potential exposures. For example, in some places, care may be provided in clinics with limited resources (e.g., no running water, no climate control, no floors, inadequate medical supplies), and workers could be in those areas for several hours with a number of Ebola infected patients. Additionally, certain job responsibilities and tasks, such as attending to dead bodies, may also require different PPE than what is used when providing care for infected patients in a hospital.
I'm sure the nurse did as she was told to do. I'm also sure she did NOT do THIS:
.
Our national policy is to allow persons who arrive from the hot zone to have free movement after they leave the airport. If this is your policy (and that is, for now, top line policy, that which cannot be changed, that which everything below the line must conform to) - if that is your policy, it must follow that "any U.S. hospital that is following CDC's infection control recommendations and can isolate a patient in a private room is capable of safely managing a patient with EVD".
For, if that is not true, WHAT ON EARTH IS OUR LEADERSHIP DOING ALLOWING INFECTED PEOPLE UNLIMITED ACCESS TO ALL AREAS OF THE COUNTRY???
Can one nurse put on and take off the correct "standard" PPE, one time, without infecting herself from germs on the PPE? Sure.
Can 100 nurses do it without a single error 100 times? No, not a chance.
And so, either top line national policy has to change, patients will have to be moved to biocontainment units separate from general wards that are staffed by people in space suits (nobody got infected at Emory) - but there are only 30-40 beds in the country so staffed - or Ebola will spread here, first to doctors and nurses, then in their communities.