Sunday, October 19, 2014

Ebola Question: Why aren't we using the PCR?

To screen every arrival from the Ebola Hot Zone in Africa — or, better yet, to screen before these potential pathogen-carriers board a commercial jetliner in the Hot Zone:
...[W]e can marry quarantine with technology using polymerase chain reaction, or PCR. At a cost of $60 to $200 the test looks for viral particles in the blood and amplifies them millions of folds, picking up most cases of Ebola patients who may still be asymptomatic. While not 100 percent foolproof, the PCR test increases the level of certainty in determining if a patient has an Ebola infection, which can ultimately lead to a more accurate decision...
Read "Rethinking the 21-Day Quarantine for Ebola Contacts" in its entirely HERE.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why isn't the author of this piece the Ebola czar instead of a lawyer?

Manoj Jain, MD MPH is an infectious disease physician, a writer, and a national leader in healthcare quality improvement.

Dr. Jain writes regularly for the Washington Post, and the Commercial Appeal (Memphis newspaper). He received his engineering, doctorate, and public health degree from Boston University and completed his residency and fellowship training at Boston City Hospital and New England Medical Center. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank on HIV, and has been interviewed by CNN and National Public Radio. Over the past 15 years Dr. Jain has given over a 150 talks, and published numerous scientific articles, chapters and books. Dr. Jain has conducted research on HIV epidemiology, quality improvement, and spirituality & medicine.

Presently, Dr. Jain is adjunct assistant professor at Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University and the medical director at Tennessee’s Quality Improvement Organizations.www.qsource.org.

He is a faculty for the Institute for Healthcare Improvement www.ihi.org, and founded and chaired the Annual Nonviolence Conference in Memphis. www.gandhikingconference.org.

Always On Watch said...

Anonymous said...

Why isn't the author of this piece the Ebola czar instead of a lawyer?


The Ebola czar may be AWOL -- or on the golf course.

Anonymous said...

Who will bear the cost of this testing? Will it be the requirement of the individual who holds the visa and seeks to visit?

Just a thought.

Anonymous said...

Anon@3:55:00...Who will bear the cost of this testing? The very same taxpayers who are paying exponentially more for each victim infected by Duncan. Pay before possibility of infection or after...given present circumstances, those are the hypothetical choices.

Epaminondas said...

The virus is ACTIVE (according to the Tulane research paper from 2007 I published here) in semen and vaginal secretions UP TO 90 DAYS.

THE END.

We NEED to screen for the safety of the public, and it is a valid public expenditure. Exactly HOW MANY TOTAL critical ebola hospital beds do we have and how much per day does that cost and who pays for that? I guarantee you we don;t have more that 200 critical ebola beds in this nation.

Screening to prevent a MINOR outbreak is well justified, as is a 30 day, self renewing travel ban AS A BILL OUT OF THE LEGISLATIVE BRANCH, so that it is our senators and congressmen who are responsible both for the ban AND its termination.

Always On Watch said...

Epa,
The virus is ACTIVE (according to the Tulane research paper from 2007 I published here) in semen and vaginal secretions UP TO 90 DAYS.

The WaPo recently published that information. But I can't see that the article got much attention.

In fact, I'm not sure that even "the conservative" web sites have brought up the dangerous fact about Ebola-infected secretions.