A protective order for several family members and friends of Thomas Eric Duncan, who died in Dallas after coming to the United States from Liberia, will expire at midnight tonight, said Judge Clay Jenkins, the top administrator for Dallas County, Texas, Sunday.
"It's not a quarantine," Jenkins told ABC "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos. "They'll be free to go."
Generally, people who have been in contact with an Ebola patient who is showing symptoms are monitored for 21 days after the exposure, according to health experts. So far, only two people, nurses Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, who cared for Duncan while he was a patient at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, have tested positive for the deadly virus.
Meanwhile, Jenkins said that approximately 75 healthcare workers remain under an agreement not to travel, after Vinson used a commercial airline to travel to Cleveland to visit with her family and plan her wedding and then back to Dallas. Vinson had reported having a fever before boarding the plane for the return trip.
"They have signed an agreement," said Jenkins Sunday. "These are hometown healthcare heroes. They just needed the protocols put in place for them."
If any more healthcare workers end up infected, the intake will be done at Texas Health Presbyterian, said Jenkins. New patients will be sent out to one of three healthcare centers for treatment.
The centers are located at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md.; or St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont., all of which have top-level biocontainment units.
"We are also setting a triage unit in another location here if we have a whole lot of cases," said Jenkins, who noted that more details about the plans are to be announced Sunday night.
Meanwhile, Texas Health Resources CEO Barclay Berdan on Saturday night
released a community letter Saturday night admitting the hospital made mistakes in caring for Thomas Eric Duncan. The Dallas Morning News
ran the letter as a full-page ad in Sunday morning's edition.
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