Joined by a lethal thread: Ebola in North Texas
The Ebola scare in North Texas reached further and touched more lives than anyone had imagined in the early days after Thomas Eric Duncan was the first to be diagnosed with the virus in the U.S.
The positive test in Dallas on Sept. 30 evoked a firm reaction from local and national healthcare professionals: Ebola would be stopped in its tracks in the nation with the best healthcare in the world, the finest physicians and the most sophisticated hospitals.
As it turned out, more lives were placed in more danger than anyone expected. Healthcare workers, schoolchildren, whole families, travelers and law enforcement officers were caught in the web that continued to grow after Duncan died Oct. 8.
The furor in North Texas has quieted down for now, and Dallas is counting the days until Nov. 7, when the virus can be declared gone if no more cases have shown up. Questions remain, but one thing is certain: Two victims fought back and won.
Lives interrupted
When Nina Pham got home from work every day, she walked little Bentley, her Cavalier King Charles spaniel, in her neighborhood on Marquita Avenue in Dallas.
Sometimes she was in such a hurry that she didn’t even change out of her scrubs to take him out.
The future looked good for Pham. She was four years out of nursing school at TCU, where she was known for both compassion and clinical expertise, and was already moving ahead. She had a good job at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas and was recently credentialed as a critical-care nurse.
Nursing had been her passion for years, since she graduated from Nolan Catholic High School in Fort Worth.
Her other love was Bentley. His breed was named after Britain’s King Charles II, and he was the same kind of dog that Charlotte York had on Sex and the City.
Bentley was known around the neighborhood as a hyper pup that everyone noticed when he was out for a walk. He would be heavy on Pham’s mind in the days to come.
One of her colleagues at Presbyterian, Amber Vinson, 29, had marriage on her mind. She had been busy browsing Pinterest, picking up ideas for cakes, dresses, hairstyles, flowers — even cute kissing photos — during off hours at her apartment in The Bend East of the Village Apartments, about two blocks from North Central Expressway.
She was looking forward to going home to Ohio soon, where she could get together with her mom in Tallmadge, a city of about 17,000 near Akron, and shop for the dress with some former classmates at Kent State University. Her roots were in Ohio — she’d graduated from high school in Akron and then with honors from Kent State in 2006.
Both she and Pham were selfless, dedicated nurses in the early stages of promising careers, young professionals living in a vibrant city with all of life waiting for them.
Friday, Sept. 19
Roberts Airport, once a U.S. Air Force base, is 32 miles from the Liberian capital, Monrovia, on the Atlantic coast. A YouTube video shows a cluster of low buildings, one runway, aircraft with steps lowered to the tarmac for passengers to disembark.
Thomas Eric Duncan is there to leave Liberia for good, to immigrate to the U.S. to begin a relationship with a son he hasn’t seen in 16 years and to marry the young man’s mother. Duncan, 42, fills out forms, answering “no” to questions about whether he has been around the Ebola virus burning out of control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. By then, it had killed thousands of people, about 70 percent of those infected.
His temperature is taken and found to be normal. Duncan boards a flight to Brussels.
Saturday, Sept. 20
Louise Troh is waiting in Dallas, excited at the prospect of starting a new life with Duncan. She fell in love with him around 1994, when both were in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast, just over the border from their native Liberia. Duncan and his family left when he was 18 as Liberia was ripped apart by the first of two horrific civil wars.
He, Troh and thousands of others fled the fighting and the atrocities — teenagers forced to kill their parents as proof of loyalty, soldiers taking bets on the sex of a pregnant woman’s child before they killed her. The first civil war lasted from 1989 to 1996.
The second raged from 1999 to 2003. The wars left Liberia with no electricity, no running water. The country, which began as a colony of freed U.S. slaves, is consistently listed as one of the poorest in the world.
Duncan and Troh had their son, Karsiah Duncan, around 1994, but the family dissolved when he was 3. Troh was approved for resettlement in the U.S. and left with the boy. Duncan’s mother, sister and half brother and other relatives also made their way to the U.S.
But Duncan was repeatedly denied a visa, and the couple had a falling-out. Troh went first to Boston and then to Dallas. While Karsiah Duncan was growing up in Texas, Duncan languished in another refugee camp for years before finally returning to Liberia in 2013.
Troh stayed in Dallas and had another son. But last year, she went to visit Duncan, and they reconciled. Lifelong friend Thomas Kwenah said Duncan told him he “wanted to marry that girl in Dallas.”
When his visa was finally approved, Duncan quit his job as a driver and got ready to go. On Sept. 15, before he left, Duncan assumed the role of good Samaritan and helped take his landlord’s pregnant, convulsing 19-year-old daughter to a hospital in Monrovia. After she was turned away, he got her back home and helped carry her inside, where she died hours later.
Neighbors said they thought the woman’s convulsions were caused by her pregnancy. But almost everyone involved in the trip that day fell ill and — a short time later — died of Ebola.
Troh, back in Dallas, at The Ivy Apartments in the 7200 block of Fair Oaks Avenue, apparently knows nothing of the encounter. Duncan flies from Brussels to Washington Dulles Airport and finally to Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. He reaches her apartment five days after he helped his sick neighbor.
He is welcomed by her and her family, including Troh’s daughter, Youngor Jallah, who also lives in Dallas. A nursing assistant with young children, Jallah thinks of Duncan as her stepfather and is excited to meet him.
Wednesday, Sept. 24
Four days later, Duncan feels ill. The next night, Sept. 25, at about 10 p.m., he goes to Presbyterian. When asked for his Social Security card, Duncan tells hospital workers he is from Africa. In a now-famous misstep, he is diagnosed with a sinus infection, given antibiotics and sent home.
Reasons given by the hospital for the decision — which, in hindsight, allowed a symptomatic Ebola patient to move about freely in Dallas — would change three times after Duncan was diagnosed. Some, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who came to town to speak on behalf of the family, said they suspected he was turned away because he was black and had no insurance, an accusation the hospital has repeatedly denied. The hospital first said Duncan’s symptoms were not those of Ebola; then, it blamed its computer records tracking system; later, the hospital said the system was not at fault and by Oct. 16 it apologized for the misdiagnosis.
Sunday, Sept. 28
Troh calls Jallah, worried about Duncan. She says he’d been up all night with diarrhea.
“She said, ‘Your stepdaddy is not feeling OK. He’s been going to the bathroom all night. You should come over and fetch him some breakfast,’ ” Jallah says.
When she arrives, she sees that Duncan’s eyes are red. She takes his temperature and finds it is 104. Checks his blood pressure and finds it low. He has three Ebola symptoms. She calls 911.
When the ambulance arrives, Jallah tells the workers that Duncan came from a “viral country,” so they don protective gear and take him to Presbyterian. He arrives at about 10:07 a.m. Neither Pham nor Vinson tends to him that day, according to medical records.
The same records show this sequence of events:
10:21 a.m. A doctor notes that Duncan just moved from Liberia and says he will check for Ebola. The doctor writes that he followed strict Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocol, wearing a mask, a gown and gloves.
11:29 a.m. The doctor says a nurse will call the county about the possibility of Ebola.
12:58 p.m. The doctor calls the CDC.
8:35 p.m. An infectious-disease specialist examines Duncan and says Ebola should be “high on the list” of suspected diagnoses.
9:40 p.m. Duncan has explosive diarrhea and projectile vomiting.
Monday, Sept. 29
Duncan seems to be getting worse and asks for a diaper because he is too tired to use the bedside commode. It is not clear exactly when the hospital calls for volunteers to take care of a potential Ebola patient, but Presbyterian has said plenty of employees stepped up, including Pham and Vinson.
4:40 p.m. Pham is on duty when Duncan is moved to an intensive-care unit that has been cleared out to keep him in isolation.
Tuesday, Sept. 30
9 a.m. The state public health lab in Austin receives a sample of Duncan’s blood for Ebola testing.
1:22 p.m. The result comes back, confirming everyone’s worst fear: He is positive for Ebola.
2 p.m. Pham is again tending to Duncan.
4:30 p.m. The CDC hastily calls a news conference at its headquarters in Atlanta to announce that the first Ebola diagnosis on U.S. soil has been made.
Rumors circulate that there are more cases, and authorities repeatedly assure the public that only one has been confirmed and that no one on the flights that Duncan took is at risk.
8:15 p.m. Vinson appears in the records for the first time, in an entry showing that nurses entered his room in hazmat suits. Earlier protective gear had included two gowns, shoe covers, masks, gloves and face shields. Vinson’s duties included inserting catheters, drawing blood and dealing with Duncan’s bodily fluids. On this day, he had extremely watery diarrhea, a fever of 102.7 and severe abdominal pain.
Wednesday, Oct. 1
Fear takes hold as Dallas County Health and Human Services Director Zachary Thompson announces that 18 people, including five students at four Dallas schools, had possible contact with Duncan. Though the Dallas school district assures parents that none of the children displayed symptoms, families rush to retrieve students. Duncan’s name and the location of the apartment are out now, and people in the vicinity are getting nervous.
Fueling the fears, local, national and international media outlets are gathering at Presbyterian, where news conferences are conducted frequently, and are sending crews into neighborhoods to talk to people about Ebola.
The CDC puts out a news release saying it has sent a team of 10 experts to Dallas.
“We are stopping Ebola in its tracks in this country,” CDC Director Tom Frieden says in the release.
2:30 a.m. Records note that the nurses add respirator masks to their protective gear and show that Vinson comes in wearing protective gear and a respirator mask. Later that night, she cares for him again, with similar protection.
8:45 a.m. The nurses add triple shoe covers and aprons. Pham is on duty now and at 1 p.m., when Duncan refuses to eat lunch, and at 5:45 p.m., when he says he’s feeling better and wants to watch an action movie.
Thursday, Oct. 2
4 a.m. Vinson is on duty when Duncan complains of “pain all over.”
Later, the number of possible contacts abruptly rises to 100. Louise Troh is quarantined, along with her son and two other relatives, and later this is made official when a Dallas County sheriff’s deputy hand-delivers control orders. A Dallas city police car is posted outside the apartments, a tangible sign of potential danger within.
Troh complains about being “locked up” in the apartment, which still contains items contaminated with Duncan’s bodily fluids, such as sheets and clothes. Several cleaning companies don’t want to take on the decontamination job.
The frightening news seems relentless. Ebola in Dallas is on CNN almost constantly and #Ebola on Twitter holds a constant stream of information, some of it accurate and much of it not even close.
By 3:45 p.m., Duncan feels better, is sitting up, drinking Sprite and eating saltines. He has a phone and has been calling relatives, but bad news arrives: Liberia plans to prosecute him for lying on a form at the airport about not having contact with an Ebola patient.
President Barack Obama calls Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and promises him the federal resources needed to treat Duncan safely.
Friday, Oct. 3
Duncan complains of abdominal pain in the morning and by evening a doctor notes that a company has been contacted about treating him with an experimental drug. Neither Pham nor Vinson is mentioned in the medical records.
The number of possible contacts drops to 50, and the Texas Department of State Health Services says 10 of those are considered “high-risk.” Troh, her son and the two other relatives are moved to a secret location that later proves to be the Dallas Archdiocese Catholic Conference and Formation Center in Oak Cliff — no one else would accept them. County Judge Clay Jenkins makes headlines by escorting the family out wearing no protective gear to prove there is no reason for concern. The Fort Worth company the Cleaning Guys decontaminates the apartment.
Dallas schools bring in fever-screening monitors.
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins says he is considering whether to file charges against Duncan, whose family defends him.
“He’s a good man,” says his half brother, Wilfred Smallwood of Phoenix. “He attends church. He tried to save that woman’s life in Monrovia.”
Smallwood counters speculation that Duncan came to the United States for better medical treatment because the Liberian health system has been overburdened by the crush of Ebola cases. U.S. visas are not granted overnight, he says.
The Rev. George Mason, pastor of the church that Troh attends, agrees, saying the trip to the U.S. was coincidental with the timing of his illness.
“They made a plan for him to come to the States and plan a wedding,” Mason tells the Star-Telegram. “Every indication I have is that it was a long-standing plan and not related to his being infected.”
Saturday, Oct. 4
In the wee hours, Ebola quickens its deadly pace.
12:11 a.m. Duncan suffers multiple organ failure. His condition is downgraded to critical. He is intubated to help him breathe. At 2:14 p.m., doctors begin to give him the experimental drug brincidofovir.
Across the U.S., Frieden, of the CDC, holds a briefing and says it will be more than a month before the Ebola risk in Dallas can be eliminated. Some Americans call for a ban on flights from West Africa, a move authorities oppose because it could stop the flow of healthcare workers into the area where Ebola is still on the rampage. Continued spread in West Africa, health experts said, would ultimately bring even more cases to the U.S.
Presbyterian discounts its previous explanations of the night of Sept. 25 and announces a change to its records system. The back-and-forth adds to the growing unease, the sense that perhaps the hospital, the county, the state and even the CDC are less sure of their strategy for handling Ebola than they first led the public to believe.
Sunday, Oct. 5
3:20 p.m. Pham is on duty when a tube is inserted into an artery in Duncan’s groin, partly to reduce the danger of constantly having to prick him to draw blood.
By now, he is on dialysis. Ebola causes kidney failure. Multiple organ failure and shock are often the cause of death, contrary to Hollywood and other fictional versions that show every patient bleeding out. The fear also surfaces that the current strain of Ebola could mutate and become airborne. Frieden notes that this has not been seen so far.
Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress call for a ban on travel from West Africa, which the White House still firmly opposes.
Monday, Oct. 6
Duncan’s family visits the hospital and glimpses him through a laptop camera in his room. The relatives later decline a second opportunity to see him because the first time kept them awake at night.
Tuesday, Oct. 7
Pham cares for Duncan from about 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on his last full day alive. According to medical records, he had loose, watery stool, and nurses had difficulty inserting a needle at one point. Pham’s notes describe nurses going in and out of his room in protective gear to treat him and to mop the floor with bleach. She said she and other nurses were ensuring Duncan’s “privacy and comfort” and providing emotional support.
Vinson is at his bedside at 7:15 p.m. He is extremely infectious. While Ebola can be passed along only through bodily fluids, the viral load increases throughout the course of the disease — the bodies of the dead are especially dangerous.
Wednesday, Oct. 8
7:51 a.m. Duncan dies.
Karsiah Duncan had left San Angelo and come to Dallas during the illness but never got to see his father.
Within hours, the family is pushing for an investigation. Why was he released the first time he went to the emergency room? Why didn’t he get the experimental drug sooner? Why wasn’t he given blood serum from an Ebola survivor like other patients treated in the U.S.?
The Texas Department of State Health Services says it is considering investigating the hospital.
The hospital kicks the experimental-drug questions up to the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, saying both were consulted on the timing. The blood serum transfusion wasn’t possible because no donors matched Duncan’s blood type. The emergency room question would hang in the air, never really answered even today.
In the prevailing mood of hypervigilance, a worried sheriff’s deputy who delivered control orders to Troh and her family goes to a CareNow in Frisco and demonstrates enough Ebola-like symptoms to trigger screening. Ambulances and workers clad in hazmat suits swarm the location. Authorities find no indication the deputy had any contact with Duncan, and he later tests negative for Ebola.
Temperature screening of travelers from West Africa begins at five U.S. airports, but some authorities acknowledge that this is window dressing added to calm everyone down. Similar screening for the SARS virus in Canada never turned up a single case.
Even as Duncan’s family grieves, fighting through tears for answers to a death that destroyed a happy ending, the virus is already growing inside its next U.S. victims.
Friday, Oct. 10
Vinson boards a Frontier Airlines flight from DFW Airport to Cleveland, eager to get to her family in Akron and work on her wedding plans.
Saturday, Oct. 11
Vinson and her friends visit Coming Attractions Bridal & Formal in Akron.
Sunday, Oct. 12
It has been four days since Duncan died, and the public has waited warily to see what would happen with the 48 possible contacts still being monitored.
What comes next stuns the nation.
Mobile alerts from news outlets hit cellphones in the morning, sending Twitter into overdrive. By 10 a.m., Frieden, who is developing bags under his eyes, shares the shocking news at another briefing: A nurse who cared for Duncan tested positive for Ebola at about 10 p.m. Oct. 11. She was isolated quickly after self-reporting a low fever Friday, and by Sunday she was in stable condition at Presbyterian.
Though her name is not released, it is later revealed to be Pham, who had earned the dubious distinction of having the first case of Ebola contracted in the U.S.
“At some point,” Frieden says, “there was a breach in protocol.”
Just as worrisome: She was not one of the 48 people being monitored.
Obama calls for a speedy investigation by the CDC. Frieden acknowledges that no one knows when or how the breach occurred.
Pham asks that Bentley be saved, afraid he will meet the same fate as a dog in Spain that was killed amid fears he carried Ebola.
Monday, Oct. 13
Pham remains in stable condition at Presbyterian. Bentley is placed in quarantine. Her apartment in the 5700 block of Marquita Avenue is decontaminated, most of her belongings packed into blue barrels and taken away to be incinerated.
The Fort Worth church attended by Pham and her family, Our Lady of Fatima, had a prayer service for her Sunday and reports Monday that her mother is talking to her using Skype. Hope comes in the form of a plasma donation from Dr. Kent Brantly, who survived Ebola.
Vinson, in Cleveland and now aware of Pham’s diagnosis, takes her temperature, finds she has a mild fever of 99.5 and reports to the CDC. In fact, she says, she reported three times and was cleared to fly from Cleveland to DFW.
Another day passes with no idea how Pham became infected. Frieden says the pool of possible contacts will grow because more than 70 healthcare workers were involved in Duncan’s care.
Tuesday, Oct. 14
Though Presbyterian has taken the brunt of the criticism over its handling of Duncan, Frieden acknowledges that the CDC was slow to respond, a misstep that may have meant that the healthcare workers in Dallas did not use the latest protection techniques.
He also announces that the number of contacts or possible contacts has grown to 125, including 76 healthcare workers.
A go team, he says, is being assembled to respond immediately to Ebola cases.
Pham’s condition is upgraded to good, and at TCU, her alma mater, about 40 people attend a vigil for her. But the Dallas Ebola prayer list is about to grow by one.
Wednesday, Oct. 15
This time, the CDC statement is released at about 4:30 a.m.: “A second healthcare worker at Texas Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the index patient has tested positive for Ebola according to preliminary tests performed overnight by the Texas Department of State Health Services’ laboratory.”
It would prove to be a very long day.
By 7 a.m., County Judge Jenkins and Dallas Mayor Rawlings are at a news conference reassuring residents that this wasn’t unexpected after Pham’s diagnosis, that the CDC is sending a team of 16 to help at Presbyterian, bringing the total federal team to 26.
Rawlings offers reassurance: “We are not fearful. It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.”
Public dismay grows after nurses at Presbyterian contact National Nurses United, which has a conference call describing a lack of protocols and constantly changing care policies after Duncan was admitted.
The nurses are kept anonymous during the call, but nurse Briana Aguirre appears the next day on NBC’s Today show, voicing many of the same complaints: inadequate protective gear, lack of protocol, hazardous waste “piled to the ceiling.” Presbyterian would release at least two point-by-point statements rebutting the nurses’ claims, but not before the nation is aghast at the allegations.
As Dallas Fire and Rescue starts to decontaminate the apartment complex at Skillman Street and Village Bend Drive, going door to door to explain what is happening, the patient’s identity emerges: It is Vinson.
Once the CDC realizes she was on a commercial flight with a slight temperature the day before the diagnosis, the scare goes nationwide.
The aircraft is grounded and placed in quarantine to await one of several major scrub-downs, and the CDC asks all 132 passengers aboard the flight from Cleveland to DFW to call in so they can be monitored. Later, the agency also locates the passengers from Vinson’s first flight for monitoring.
Frieden says Vinson should have never gotten on the plane, and her family hires a public relations firm and high-profile lawyer Billy Martin to describe and defend her actions.
She is transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where Brantly was successfully treated, arriving at about 8:30 p.m.
Thursday, Oct. 16
The phrase an abundance of caution becomes commonplace as schools in Texas and Ohio shut down for cleaning and disinfect buses as they learn of students and parents who were on flights with Vinson.
A Saginaw family is on 21-day monitoring because the father was on one of the flights. The Belton school district in Central Texas temporarily shuts down three campuses for disinfection after learning that a family of four, including two students, was on a flight with her.
In the Grapevine-Colleyville school district, three students on the flight are staying home for monitoring, but schools stay open. The Lewisville and Hurst-Euless-Bedford districts report various possible contacts but keep schools open as the passengers stay home.
Schools in northeast Ohio are also closed because of Vinson’s flights.
None of the possible contacts display symptoms, and Frieden says it is unlikely they were at risk because Vinson wasn’t vomiting or bleeding. But nobody wants to take a chance.
The hospital, now missing 76 workers as they undergo the 21 days of monitoring, offers them free rooms. The resulting staff shortage is part of the reason given for transferring Vinson to the biocontainment unit at Emory.
Pham is also transferred, to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. Presbyterian says the transfer will “give the hospital an opportunity to prepare for whatever comes next.”
The hospital releases a video of a tearful Pham in bed, saying “I love you guys” to her co-workers before she leaves.
Amid everything else, Dallas County’s top public health epidemiologist confirms that she was possibly exposed to Ebola and places herself on 21 days of self-monitoring.
Friday, Oct. 17
The quarantine periods for some of the early possible contacts with Duncan are ending, and one of the first is cleared.
Pham’s condition drops from good to fair, but Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases vows to “have this patient walk out of this hospital.”
In one of the most bizarre Ebola stories, a healthcare worker who had handled a lab specimen from Duncan self-quarantines on a Caribbean cruise ship bound for Belize via Cozumel. The Carnival Magic is not allowed to stop in Cozumel, and the Belize government will not let the woman fly home from the Belize City Airport, so she and her husband sit out the cruise in isolation.
She tests negative for Ebola as the cruise ends.
Obama appoints an Ebola czar, Ron Klain, who is described as a government insider with no medical background.
Saturday, Oct. 18
Friends and family gather for Duncan’s memorial service in Salisbury, N.C., where he is remembered as a man who died helping someone.
CDC officials in Ohio say 116 people are being monitored for Ebola. None are sick, but a CDC team leader in Ohio, Dr. Chris Braden, said the threat is real: “As long as this disease is burning hot in Africa, those sparks can fly.” Ohio Gov. John Kasich becomes the latest to call for a travel ban from West Africa.
Sunday, Oct. 19
Troh’s three-week isolation ends. She, her son and two nephews are released from monitoring at the Catholic center but plan to stay until authorities can find them a place to live.
Troh asks for privacy, saying, “I do have a story to tell, and I look forward to telling it in my own way.”
The family’s possessions were destroyed during decontamination, and the group has no place to go. Troh plans a book about her life — from growing up in Liberia and meeting Duncan in a refugee camp in Ivory Coast to Duncan’s quest to come to America and his death in the isolation ward.
“It will be a love story,” she says.
The same day, Texas Health Resources, the hospital’s parent company, publishes full-page ads in the Star-Telegram and The Dallas Morning News in which CEO Barclay Berdan says, “We made mistakes in handling this very difficult challenge.”
Berdan praises the Presbyterian staff and says the hospital is safe. But he acknowledges a missed opportunity when Duncan was sent away the first time.
Monday, Oct. 20
The CDC issues new guidelines and recommendations for protective gear and procedures around Ebola patients.
Wednesday, Oct. 22
Vinson’s family announces that she is Ebola-free but will remain at Emory until she is fully recovered. The number of possible contacts being monitored continues to decrease, and if no new cases emerge by Nov. 6, North Texas will be Ebola-free by Nov. 7.
The Obama administration, facing continued pressure to ban travel from West African countries, instead requires that arrivals from the Ebola-ravaged areas pass through one of five airports where extra screening is taking place: Washington Dulles, Kennedy in New York, Liberty in Newark, O’Hare in Chicago and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.
Friday, Oct. 24
Pham walks out of the NIH hospital Ebola-free, gets a hug from Obama and comes home to a hero’s welcome at Presbyterian.
Tuesday, Oct. 28
Vinson is released and praised by doctors as a courageous front-line caregiver.
Epilogue
Both nurses’ apartments have been stripped of most of their belongings. They will have to start over. A friend of Pham’s has raised more than $89,000 through gofundme.org to help her put her life back together. Bentley was released from quarantine and reunited with Pham on Saturday.
North Texas is getting closer to being declared Ebola-free, just a week away from Nov. 7, but now the virus is weaving its web of mayhem in New York and Maine. On Oct. 23, Dr. Craig Spencer, who returned to New York City after treating patients in West Africa, had tested positive for Ebola and remains ill and isolated in Bellevue Hospital Center.
Nurse Kaci Hickox, who graduated from Rio Vista High School, south of Fort Worth, and the University of Texas at Arlington, flew to New Jersey on Oct. 24 after working with Ebola patients for Doctors Without Borders. She was quarantined in an isolation tent.
Asymptomatic and now at home in Fort Kent, Maine, she broke the quarantine Thursday, going on a bicycle ride with her boyfriend, followed by police and a caravan of reporters. A judge later gave Hickox the OK to go wherever she pleases.
This report includes material from The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Texas Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the book Another America (2013) by James Ciment and the Star-Telegram archives.
This story was originally published November 1, 2014 at 8:55 PM with the headline "Joined by a lethal thread: Ebola in North Texas."