Person isolated at St. Catharines General

CHCH News has learned that another patient has been put in the isolation unit at St. Catharines general. The person’s been identified as possibly presenting symptoms of Ebola. There was a similar situation at the same hospital at the beginning of September, but in that case Ebola was ruled out. But will we see the same result this time?

The patient came into the hospital in the early hours of Tuesday morning with flu like symptoms. Staff responded immediately with their screening and from those answers, identified this patient needed to go into isolation. The hospital will not say if that patient had recently been in an Ebola stricken country or had contact with someone who was.

Dr. Tom Stewart, NHS Chief of Staff: “Until Ebola is gone again away from the world — I mean, I’m sure we’ll never be completely away from it — but when this current outbreak is under control, given that we have a global community, countries are going to have the potential to be seeing patients like this. In many areas of Canada who have had suspect patients, no one has ever tested positive yet and I expect there will be more. And there is even a chance that at some point we will have an Ebola positive test. But your viewers have to understand, we can control it. An example is now Nigeria is now Ebola free and they had an outbreak. People have to understand, infection control works in this situation. It’s just a matter of training and having the right processes in place.”

Blood samples have been sent to a national microbiology lab in Winnipeg for testing. Those results should be back within days. The NHS will let the public know through the media when they are.