One of the two US aid workers infected with Ebola while working in West Africa arrived in the US on Saturday aboard a private air ambulance specially equipped to isolate patients with infectious diseases and was quickly admitted to a hospital.
The jet carrying Kent Brantly, a physician who is believed to be the first patient carrying the virus ever to be treated at a hospital in the US, landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base at about 11am.
With news helicopters flying overhead, a police-escorted ambulance carrying Brantly arrived less than 90 minutes later at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia, which has a containment unit for patients with dangerous infectious diseases.
The unit was built more than a decade ago with consultation from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has its headquarters nearby.
Not long after the ambulance pulled into a service entrance at Emory, television footage recorded from helicopters showed Brantly, dressed in protective gear, walking into the hospital with assistance.
Security was tight at the facility, with law enforcement officers posted around the building ahead of Brantly’s admission and a police canine unit having performed an inspection of the premises.
Although Emory, citing health privacy laws, declined to identify the patient, Christian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse said it was Brantly. He and the other infected US aid worker, Nancy Writebol, were working at a hospital in Liberia treating patients with Ebola.
Samaritan’s Purse said that Writebol would return to the US “within the next few days” to receive treatment at the Atlanta hospital.
At a news conference on Friday, Bruce Ribner, a physician and infectious disease specialist at Emory who will be involved in both aid workers’ care, said: “The reason we are bringing these patients back to our facility is because we feel they deserve to have the highest level of care offered for their treatment.”
Both patients will receive what Ribner described as “supportive care” focused on maintaining their vital functions, like blood pressure and breathing.
“We depend on the body’s defenses to control the virus,” he said. “We just have to keep the patient alive long enough in order for the body to control this infection.”
Ribner said that Emory would have a robust roster of medical workers handling the care of Brantly and Writebol, including four infectious disease doctors, a rotating cast of nurses and subspecialists, as needed.
Alexander Isakov, executive director of Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response, said in an interview that the staff in the containment unit had volunteered to work there and that some who were supposed to be on vacation had offered to cancel their plans to take care of the new patients.
Brantly and Writebol will be housed in a unit that is small and positioned well away from other patients at the sprawling hospital.
They will probably have limited contact with visitors, Ribner said, communicating with nonmedical personnel through telephones and an intercom system. A sheet of glass will separate the ill from the healthy.
Isakov said the unit had been used only three to five times since it was built, in each case for patients suspected of having serious diseases like SARS, but who turned out not to have those illnesses. This is the first time the unit will house patients confirmed to be infected with a dangerous disease.
Although the US Department of State said it had been involved in facilitating the evacuations from Liberia, Emory said that Samaritan’s Purse was paying for the transportation and care of the workers.
Ribner said Emory officials had communicated with state and county regulators about the patients, but that air ambulance service the Phoenix Air Group had been responsible for securing the necessary clearances to bring the two home.
Ribner was among those who dismissed rising fears, often appearing online, that the arrivals of the two patients would spread the disease in the US.
“From the time the air ambulance arrives in the metropolitan Atlanta area, up to and including [the patients] being hospitalized at Emory University Hospital, we have taken every precaution that we know and that our colleagues at the CDC know to ensure that there is no spread of this virus pathogen,” he said.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden agreed that the patients posed little risk to others, adding: “These are American citizens. American citizens have a right of return. I certainly hope people’s fear doesn’t trump their compassion.”
Although social media sites have been replete with misgivings about Emory’s plan, many people near the hospital said it did not bother them, partly because the disease centers and their high-security laboratories have long been part of the Atlanta landscape.
“We’ve already got smallpox and all that other crap at the CDC,” Joey Voll, who works near the hospital, said with a shrug after Ribner’s news conference on Friday.
Sukru Aydin, who runs a computer repair shop nearby, said he trusted Emory and wondered if fears of a US outbreak were overblown.
“To me, it’s nothing different than AIDS or some disease that this country has,” he said.
Elaine Peek, a psychology student at Georgia State University who once interned at the CDC, said she was confident health officials would be careful.
“This is a really serious issue and they know it’s contagious, so they’re going to take every precaution necessary,” she said.
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