The first Ebola patient in the United States died because the hospital he went to initially released him when he should have been admitted, says former Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Tevi Troy.
"He did present too late for them to do anything about it," Troy told Ed Berliner on "MidPoint" on
Newsmax TV Wednesday.
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Thomas Eric Duncan, who was visiting the United States from Liberia,
died Wednesday morning at Texas Health Presbyterian in Dallas where he was receiving treatment for Ebola after being admitted Sept. 28. Duncan had first gone to the Dallas hospital Sept. 24 and ended up being sent home.
"Part of the problem is ... that the hospital had him and released him in those crucial 48 hours [that] might have made a difference in potentially saving his life," he explained.
"Also those crucial 48 hours are the period in which he may have infected other people," he said.
"We've already discussed the fact that the way the Dallas Public Health System handled this was extremely problematic and needs to be improved in other cities in dealing with Ebola," he added.
"His death while a tragedy doesn't change the urgency of the situation one way or the other," the senior fellow at the Hudson Institute told Newsmax.
Troy contends that "public health officials need to be held to a higher standard."
"You can't just wait until something presents itself at your doorstep to deal with it," he explained.
"If you want to eliminate a pathogen or a viral threat, you need to go to its source and tamp it down, and that needs to be done and was not done soon enough in this case," he said.
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