SANTA ROSA -- If Ebola virus cases show up in Sonoma County, Emergency Manager Christopher Helgren and his team will spring into action with a well-planned response.
“Public health has a huge role” in coordinating “a direct response to the threat, whether it’s a biological agent or pandemic,” Mr. Helgren said. The public health office has the authority to seek a court order to quarantine patients with Ebola, tuberculosis or other diseases. Ebola “is definitely scary,” Mr. Helgren said. “It has such a high mortality rate,” killing about half its victims. “I don’t want to underestimate the danger here.”
“With Ebola, you want to make sure you quarantine it,” he said. In a few months in Africa, the number of cases leaped tenfold from a few hundred to nearly 7,000. “They are taking strong and drastic measures, restricting people’s freedoms, to contain this, keep it from spreading.”
“Human-to-human transmission is exactly what they try to prevent,” Mr. Helgren said. “The problem is what you’re seeing in Africa. If you get behind that curve, it becomes very difficult to manage. The early, aggressive, proactive quarantining that is significant and severe is going to stave off a wider infection.”
The county has an emergency operations plan that is the “overarching, global response for the county,” Mr. Helgren said. As needed, the county would coordinate with state or federal officials, including the Centers for Disease Control, in managing quarantines or other protective measures.
“This is a high-profile incident,” Mr. Helgren said, but the government’s emergency response is similar for other diseases “that pop up every once in awhile.”Ebola hot-zone suits: Nanotech gear promises more potent response
Ebola virus killed more than 3,200 people in West Africa since the start of the outbreak at the end of 2013. The United States saw its first patient come down with an Ebola infection in Texas on September 28, exposing up to 100 other people as of Oct. 3.
Hot-zone protocol requires fastidious suiting up with rubber boots, impermeable hazardous-material suits, double latex gloves, breathing masks and a hood, with multiple chlorine washes of boots and hands upon exit. If diligently executed, the protocol works. But no one can stand to stay inside the suits for long.
New nanotechnology-based protective suits under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory promise a giant leap forward in medical worker comfort while working in Ebola hot zones, and areas poisoned by biological and chemical weapons. [read more]
