Cobra meeting in UK, NHS hospitals put on alert.

originally posted by: MarkJS

originally posted by: crazyewok
Here is a very simple measure.

Stop anyone with Passports from west africa coming into the UK, refuse entry to anyone who has had a stamp put on there passport from said country and any proof of flight transfer.

Sounds feasible. But what if they have, say, Liberian passports but say that they live in Europe?

Look at the entry and exiuts stamps in the passport if it indicates they have gone back to Liberia? Well stuff them.

Madness really, all of it. But compare what we have here i.e. supplies, ppe, healthcare etc to what they have in west africa. I saw reports of people there resorting to using plastic bags as gloves to care for their sick.

Sky news is reporting that UK is going to introduce screening at airports.

a reply to: DrHammondStoat

Ebola outbreak simulations to be tested in UK hospitals
Department of Health confirms weekend real-time response tests in unnamed hospitals in the north and south of England

War game-style simulations to test Britain’s ability to cope with an outbreak of Ebola will be staged this weekend in hospitals in the north and south of England.

Officials at the Department of Health are drawing up details of at least two simulations which will involve people posing as victims of the deadly virus to assess the real-time response of hospitals, the ambulance service and local authorities. The exercise will take place on either Saturday or Sunday and details of which hospitals will be chosen to handle the mock cases are being kept confidential to minimise disruption to the exercise, an official said.

www.theguardian.com...

Preparation is good, obviously....then agian, drills do have a pesky habit of appearing at the same time as some kind of real emergency!

originally posted by: number38
Madness really, all of it. But compare what we have here i.e. supplies, ppe, healthcare etc to what they have in west africa. I saw reports of people there resorting to using plastic bags as gloves to care for their sick.

Sky news is reporting that UK is going to introduce screening at airports.

a reply to: DrHammondStoat

Yes I hope our equipment and infrastructure will help in curbing this. It's worth remembering Nigeria managed to get a hold on their outbreak. It seems PAtrick Sawyer and Nigeria have been forgotten in the panic about Texas.

There is quite a good article here that explains what happened.

Within 24 hours, he became Nigeria’s Ebola patient zero, the small hospital was forced to become a makeshift Ebola ward, and Adadevoh, an endocrinologist, found herself thrust into the role of stopping the disease’s spread in the continent’s most populous country.

That Nigeria has so far emerged relatively unscathed from its brush with Ebola owes much to the quick-thinking staff at an ordinary family clinic, who put themselves in the firing line for six days before the government was ready to relocate him.
.....
So Adadevoh set up aggressive barrier nursing, organised the disinfection of the hospital, and downloaded and distributed Ebola factsheets. For six days, the clinic’s staff effectively ran an Ebola isolation unit with no government help. When Liberian presidential officials called to insist Sawyer be released to attend a conference – he was a high-ranking civil servant – the hospital refused to let him go. And when an isolation ward was finally set up, Adadevoh visited even as other doctors refused to volunteer to staff it.

Meanwhile, the authorities’ slow revving into action eventually produced remarkable results. Drawing on a polio-surveillance system, health workers made 18,000 visits to 900 people to check the temperatures of possible contacts.

www.theguardian.com...

Surely if Nigeria can do it, so can Europe and the US.

I was just thinking that.

Screening might help pull the net tighter, but cases will slip through.

At which point do we panic? a reply to: DrHammondStoat

a reply to: number38

I think I will panic when there's more than a handful of cases in every town!

Even so, if you panic or not the WHO has been advising for years that people should be prepared for the next pandemic and have 3 months worth of food on hand in case you need to isolate yourself. Even if it was ordinary flu or ebola you can only do that one thing.

a reply to: OtherSideOfTheCoin
It's good to know that some places are taking this outbreak seriously. Thanks for sharing this.
However, in my town, not one physician has been contacted by the health department or CDC in regards to Ebola--not even an email or 1-paragraph letter. A few years ago, the CDC did send info to offices about tuberculosis. Nothing about Ebola though.

Yup.

Plenty to eat in the british countryside...if you know where to look. Just stay away from the Hemlock.

I might panic once one case arrives.

I'd be panicking if I lived in Dallas or Madrid.

a reply to: DrHammondStoat

I learn't about ebola as a child growing up in South africa. It was bloody scary the way it was portrayed on the news there.

My worry is that they may put things in place to protect the public, but think about how that information will be streamed down and implemented into the 1000s of hospitals and 100 000s of nurses, doctors and hospital staff across the country.

Soooo much space for human error.

a reply to: drwill

"Enhanced screenings" to take place at Gatwick, Heathrow and Eurostar terminals.

Sky news. Although they're saying it probably won't make a difference.

a reply to: number38

You're right - it will make little difference. They need to close travel to and from affected areas, but they are terrified of being labelled as racist or cruel.

a reply to: number38
I agree.

Link

An update.

"The apparent U-turn comes before a war game-style test of Britain’s ability to cope with an outbreak being planned by the Department of Health this weekend. Doctors, the ambulance service, local authorities and the police will take part in the real-time simulation of Ebola cases at two or more hospitals to be selected in the north and south of England.

No 10 said: “Advice from the chief medical officer today is that enhanced screening arrangements at the UK’s main ports of entry for people travelling from the affected regions – Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea – will offer an additional level of protection to the UK.

“These measures will help to improve our ability to detect and isolate Ebola cases. However, it is important to stress that given the nature of this disease, no system could offer 100% protection from ]NON-SYMPTOMATIC CASES.”

Duh!!!

The Foreign Office was last night investigating reports that a Briton had died of suspected Ebola in Macedonia..............."

The good old Daily mail ramping up the fear...

A British man has died of suspected Ebola in the Macedonian capital of Skopje despite not having been to Africa.
if confirmed the unnamed 58-year-old is the first British victim of the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in West Africa and has spread to North America and Europe.
The man's death and nationality was confirmed by the Macedonian Foreign Ministry last night and the its head of infectious diseases, Dr Jovanka Kostovska, said the Briton had been suffering from fever, vomiting and internal bleeding.
'These are all symptoms of Ebola, which raises suspicions with this patient,' she said.
A second man, 72, a friend of the deceased, has also shown symptoms of the disease.
Macedonian officials said last night the unnamed victim had flown the Skopje directly from Britain and had not been to any countries known to be battling Ebola outbreaks.
It raises the terrifying possibility that he contracted the disease in the UK or Macedonia.


Read more: www.dailymail.co.uk... Ome500

Yes It raises the terrifying possibility that he contracted the disease in the UK or Macedonia but also the much less scarier prospect that he had something else, there are many other things that could cause high temperature and internal bleeding.

Lets not panic yet!

During either the SARS outbreak in 2003 or the H1N1 outbreak in 2008/9, a big deal was made of the installation of thermal sensing in airport surveillance. The idea was to identify anyone passing through the airport who had an elevated temperature. Is this stuff still in place, or did it turn out to such a terrible idea that it was dropped? Or did it not go beyond a tiny corner of the world (i.e. Canada)?

That seems like a better detection method than "Do you have a fever?"

If we are truly concerned, though, I agree. We should shut down any travel out of affected areas that are not containing on their end, and apply extra screening and quarantines for anyone that does come from affected areas.

Has anyone here played "Plague Inc."? The goal of the game is to act as the virus, and adjust your infection vectors, symptoms and such to infect and kill 100% of the human population. Grim, yes, but it gives a good insight into the effectiveness of countermeasures, and viral strategies that can infect more people. Typically, a way to "win" is to keep the virus low-key enough that you can get into as many countries as possible before travel is shut down... the game seems to be more willing to pull the plug on travel, though.

Funny story on my part....

Went out into a big city in the UK last week for some fun and dancing. Around 1pm a guest DJ from West Africa came on, joked about not having ebola and spent the next few hours playing bad music and making jokes about ebola.

It was quite surreal.