Ohio officials to meet in Akron Saturday on Ebola status, procedures

Staff report

Gov. John Kasich and elected and health officials will meet with representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today to get an update on the status of Ohio’s Ebola response.

The meeting will be at the Summit County Health Department in Akron.

Amber Joy Vinson, a 29-year-old nurse who had treated the Liberian man who died of the disease in a Dallas hospital, visited family in the Akron area last week then flew back to Texas from Cleveland on Monday. She was diagnosed with Ebola the next day.

A tabletop exercise hosted by St. Elizabeth Health Center in Youngstown on Friday helped hospital personnel, government officials, public health representatives and other front-line organizations learn their roles should a patient with Ebola symptoms walk into the emergency room.

Some 40 people attended the exercise in person and 25 others remotely at St. Joseph in Warren and St. Elizabeth Boardman.

The protocol includes asking the patient if he has traveled to one of the three West African nations in which the Ebola outbreak is centered — Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — within the past 21 days.

“The first thing we look for is an elevated temperature and ask the patient if they have been in close contact with anyone who has been diagnosed with Ebola and is being monitored or quarantined for Ebola,” Koenig said.

If the patient’s answers are affirmative, hospital personnel suit up with personal protective equipment, quarantine the patient in the hospital’s negative-pressure room, and call the Mahoning County Health Department for instructions, Koenig said.

The county health department is the liaison between health care providers and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he said.

Koenig said HMHP has placed personal protective equipment in the emergency rooms at St. Elizabeth and St. Joseph Health Center in Warren and has ordered more protective suits that have begun arriving.

Meanwhile, state health officials will ask the Controlling Board on Monday for approval to spend $300,000 to buy extra protective equipment to ensure hospitals and other facilities have what they need in case of any confirmed cases of Ebola.

Read more on the continuing health crisis in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.