1st Patient Diagnosed with Ebola in U.S. Dies; 5 U.S. Airports to Start Screening Incoming Travelers

By Kelly Young

Edited by Susan Sadoughi, MD, and Richard Saitz, MD, MPH, FACP, FASAM

Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died on Wednesday. Last month, Duncan traveled to Dallas from Liberia, where he had had close contact with someone with Ebola.

Duncan was initially turned away when he first presented to a Dallas hospital. He was admitted roughly 3 days later after his condition deteriorated. Duncan had been on a respirator and was receiving dialysis, CDC Director Tom Frieden told reporters on Tuesday. In his last days, he'd been receiving the experimental antiviral drug brincidofovir.

In other Ebola news:

• To try to catch ill travelers earlier, the U.S. said it will start screening airline passengers from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea at five U.S. airports. The airports — New York's JFK, Washington Dulles, Chicago's O'Hare, Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson, and New Jersey's Newark Liberty — receive 94% of the travelers from the three most affected countries. Travelers from those countries will be pulled aside and screened with noncontact thermometers and questions about their contacts and exposures.

• The World Health Organization says the number of suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola has topped 8000.

• A nurse's aide in Spain is believed to be the first person to contract the virus outside of Africa. She had helped treat a missionary who died of Ebola.