Diary Prequel Package — page 379

Oct 12, 2014 (Sunday) - A very important issue that arose this weekend. Very early in the morning at approximately 5:45 t0 6:00 AM, I received an e-mail from Leslie Dach that there would be a conference call with Sylvia, Lisa Monaco, White House Comms (Palmieri), Tom Frieden, me, etc. about a breaking situation. A nurse (turned out to be - see below) who had been caring for at the Dallas hospital reported to be ill. It is felt that there was likely an innocent, inadvertent breaking of protocol on the part of the nurse. She had taken direct care of during very serious parts of his illness including hemodialysis, intubation, and insertion of a rectal tube. The nurse became febrile on Friday evening, reported to authorities on Saturday, the preliminary Ebola test was done on Saturday and the results came back positive on Sunday (today), subsequently confirmed by CDC. I was just getting ready to go on the Sunday morning shows today when the phone call came to discuss what approach we would take. This ignited an extraordinary media frenzy in which Tom Frieden. I was virtually on every show. I was on "This Week" on ABC as well as "Meet the Press" as well as CNN "State of the Union" as well as evening CNN. There is now considerable concern in the country that the United States government keeps saying that we are prepared and then something like this happens which creates a credibility gap. I have been intensively emphasizing on my interviews that we need to distinguish between the unlikelihood that there will be an outbreak which still does not change since the contact tracing that has been done with the case is working and there is a good umbrella over and identification of the people who were contacts and they are currently being monitored either actively or on their own. This needs to be distinguished from a inadvertent breach of protocol in which a healthcare worker has gotten infected which is bad for health care workers but really has nothing to do with an outbreak in the country. I have been continually expressing this in my interviews. One issue that has come up is a concern on the part of nurses throughout the country that the use of the term "breach" in protocol implies that the nurses are to blame and this nurse in particular was to blame. I have been very active in emphasizing that this is not the case that this is an inadvertent, innocent, "breach" of protocol and that we need to intensify the training for the nurses. The nurses themselves have said that they are inadequately trained and although the protocol might be a good protocol, they are not trained to implement the protocol. The CDC has responded by being very proactive in increasing their training with webinars, conference calls, and active visits on the part of CDC staff to the involved hospital in Dallas as well as to anywhere else where this situation might arise. Press - This Week (ABC); Meet the Press, CNN State of the Union; CNN evening. Oct.13, 2014 - One of the busiest press days that I have had. Media frenzy at high pitch. Much, much criticism of the USG and CDC is particular saying that the USG and CDC keep telling us we have everything under control and still there are many mis-steps. I have been calmly explaining on TV and radio that people should not conflate what is working, i.e. the lack of an outbreak because of the proper implementation of isolation and care of Ebola patients and the infection of a health care worker. Clearly, HCWs are not implementing the CDC PPE protocol. CDC people went down to Dallas and the HCWS are doing a lot of things incorrectly. Thus, the ability of our hospital to recognize