In the last few months, there have been plenty of scares and alarms about cases of Ebola in the United States, and plenty of calls to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, a report found that only 20% of these were calls that were valid enough to require follow-up. Calls about possible cases of Ebola infection came from doctors, nurses, hospitals, and state or municipal health departments. The vast majority of these calls were about someone who could not possibly be infected by the virus, according to the report.
Many calls were about patients who had not traveled to an area where Ebola is epidemic nor had they been in contact with someone who had Ebola symptoms. In some of these cases, physicians treating these patients did not test for other likelier diseases before calling, such as malaria, which could explain the symptoms.
Some calls to the CDC had more validity and 650 of these calls were investigated by federal health officials. Only four people ended up testing positive for Ebola virus, including the Liberian man who contracted the disease in his home country and then traveled to Dallas in October before showing symptoms. He died of the infection. Two of the nurses who treated him caught the infection from him, but recovered. The fourth case was in a New York physician who developed Ebola after returning home from a stint treating the disease in West Africa.
The CDC noted that it is not complaining about all the phone calls. Healthcare workers need to have "a high degree of vigilance about Ebola and a low threshold for requesting public consultation," said Dr. Alexa Oster, an epidemiologist with the CDC who was the lead author on the agency's report.
Calls to the CDC were highest in October, right after the Liberian man was diagnosed in Texas. The number of calls has fallen off since then, primarily because the public and healthcare professionals have become more familiar with the symptoms and risk factors for Ebola and because state and local health departments can test for Ebola on their own, without having to contact the CDC.