A patient was released Tuesday from Maine Medical Center in Portland after testing negative for Ebola “multiple” times and spending two days under observation, according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. It was the first publicly disclosed Ebola test at a Maine hospital.
The patient had showed up Sunday at Maine Med for an unrelated reason, but complained about a fever and had recently traveled to a “region of concern,” said Maine CDC Director Dr. Sheila Pinette. Because those conditions matched criteria on a checklist that federal health officials are urging health care providers to use in screening for the disease, the patient was held and tested for Ebola, Pinette said.
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The Ebola virus has killed thousands of people in West Africa and recently surfaced in the United States, killing a man in Texas and infecting a nurse who cared for him. This was the first time that concern about a possible Ebola case has played out in Maine, heightening public concern about a disease that had previously seemed a remote threat. Health officials in several other U.S. cities have responded to possible cases in the past few days, including Boston and Richmond, Virginia.
Before the Maine Med patient was tested and while awaiting test results, hospital workers dressed in hazmat suits to care for the patient, who was held in isolation, Pinette said. The patient was released after the negative tests and after more than 24 hours had passed.
Dr. August Valenti, infectious disease specialist at Maine Med, told the Press Herald on Tuesday that “it’s been an exhausting two days” as the hospital worked to care for the patient and keep the staff safe by going beyond federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines on how to handle possible Ebola patients.
“My decision was to give our personnel maximal protection,” Valenti said. The hospital has trained roughly 100 employees over the past three months about Ebola protocol, supplementing ongoing training for other infectious diseases, he said.
The doctor and two nurses who cared for the patient went through 25 hazmat suits. After visiting the patient, the providers would step into a “warm” room that separated the isolation area from the rest of the hospital, where their suits would be disinfected. The suits were then incinerated.
“Even though we dispose of the suits, we still disinfect them first,” Valenti said.
Valenti said he donned a protective suit and spoke with the patient personally at the patient’s request. Maine Med and the Maine CDC declined to release more information about the patient, citing patient confidentiality.
Pinette said the case was considered “low risk” from the start and unlikely to result in a confirmed case of Ebola. Symptoms start two days to three weeks after the virus is contracted and include fever, sore throat, muscle pain, headaches, vomiting and diarrhea.
After initial and incomplete news reports surfaced Monday evening about the patient being tested for Ebola, Maine Med and CDC officials provided no further details about the case or their response to it until midafternoon Tuesday.
Pinette had said Monday that the patient was not showing any symptoms of Ebola, although a Maine CDC news release on Tuesday said the patient did have symptoms. Pinette clarified Tuesday that the patient had a fever on Sunday, but those symptoms had subsided by Monday, when she spoke with a Press Herald reporter.
The news that the patient tested negative was first released by Gov. Paul LePage while he was campaigning Tuesday in Lewiston with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. LePage also raised the question of whether the person under observation is in the United States legally.
“First of all, the individual in question has been tested and is not infected, number one,” LePage said. “Number two, (Maine Emergency Management) and (the Maine Center for Disease Control) are working together to make sure that, as this develops and people travel, we’re on top of this. The bigger issue right now is whether or not this individual had the proper papers.”
The question was the last one LePage answered before retreating to his motorcade. LePage spokeswoman Adrienne Bennett did not respond to a request for comment on the governor’s remarks.
Pinette said that whether a person is in the U.S. legally has no bearing on how a patient who has Ebola or is being tested for it would be cared for, and it would not affect any Maine CDC procedures. Most African immigrants to Maine are from East Africa, not near Liberia or other countries in West Africa where Ebola is prevalent.
“Ebola is of low concern in Maine, but we are prepared to expect the unexpected,” Pinette said. “We are on guard.”
Leaders of the federal CDC promised Tuesday to send teams of professionals, including infection control experts, within hours to any hospital that admits a patient who tests positive for Ebola. Valenti said that is sound policy, but he believes Maine Med is prepared should more Ebola cases arrive.
“Could we handle 10 Ebola cases? It would be difficult, but yes, we could do it,” Valenti said.
One issue that state officials could face in any future case is deciding when public health concerns outweigh an individual patient’s right to privacy or other rights, said Dora Anne Mills, vice president for clinical affairs at the University of New England.
“It’s a dialogue we should be having regarding Ebola,” said Mills, a former Maine CDC director. “We should actually be talking about this across the country.”
To protect the public, the state in some cases may have to quarantine people against their will if they are not hospitalized and are unwilling or don’t have the ability to isolate themselves, Mills said. Maine had to isolate someone against their will several years ago in a tuberculosis case, she said. Federal guidelines do not call for isolating people against their will.
The Ebola outbreak has infected more than 8,400 people and killed more than 4,000 people, nearly all in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
Massachusetts had an Ebola scare Sunday when dozens of workers and patients were quarantined for hours at a Braintree medical facility, but fears that a man had been infected with the deadly virus appeared unfounded, according to The Associated Press.
Staff Writer Matt Byrne contributed to this report.
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