Mass. General reported at 12:45 p.m.:
The initial test for Ebola on the patient admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital yesterday with suspected Ebola virus disease is negative. The patient has, however, tested positive for malaria. Further diagnostic testing is needed to definitively rule out Ebola virus disease and other diagnoses.
The Daily Free Press reports BU researchers are working on a "single particle interferometric reflectance imaging sensor" that can confirm an Ebola diagnosis in about an hour, using a drop of a patient's blood.
The Crimson reports that Harvard researchers are working on test strips "containing freeze-dried enzymes called 'switches' " that can confirm an Ebola diagnosis in about 30 minutes, using a drop of a patient's blood.
The head of the city's infectious-disease program says we're not going to see a replay of what happened to that nurse in Newark.
"You can't lock them up, it just doesn't work," Dr. Anita Barry, director of the Boston Public Health Commission's infectious-disease program, told the commission board today.
WBUR reports on Gov. Patrick's comments. Compare to the treatment a nurse just back from Sierra Leone got in Newark.
The New Yorker talks to Harvard and MIT researchers trying to figure out how to battle Ebola by deciphering its genetic code, including Harvard biology professor Pardis Sabeti, who heads the "Ebola war room" at MIT's Broad Institute.
The next morning, Gire took a car to the M.I.T. campus, carrying a small box containing the tubes of droplets with the Ebola RNA. There, in a lab at the Broad Institute, he and a colleague named Sarah Winnicki, working alongside two other research teams, prepared the RNA to be decoded. The work took four days, and Gire and Winnicki hardly slept. By the end, they had combined all fourteen samples into a single, crystal-clear droplet of water solution. The drop contained about six trillion snippets of DNA. Each was a mirror image of a piece of RNA from the blood samples. Most of the snippets were human genetic code, but among them were about two hundred billion snippets of code from Ebola.
Jarek noticed this sign in the window of a salon across from Faneuil Hall this morning.
Somebody who claims to already have a hideaway deep in the Green Mountains is seeking a compatible woman to have at least three of his babies after society is laid waste by Ebola. And he's serious - Craigslist wouldn't let him post an ad if he weren't, right?
Around 11:20 a.m., police shut the Mass. Ave. Orange Line stop, stopped train service and blocked traffic on Mass. Ave. after somebody started vomiting on the platform.
The station and street were re-opened about 15 minutes later - and the person transported to a local hospital - after first responders determined she did not have Ebola.
Boston EMS Incidents reports EMTs rushed to the station on a report of "an external hemorrhage."
In the second article of my politics of fear series, I present 'Republican Cuts Kill' by Agenda Project Action Fund, a political organization. The first post in the series, Boston Herald Fear-Mongers Ebola "Panic" on Front Page, was about the Boston Herald newspaper, a news organization with editorial comment.
The Boston Public Health Commission reports the patients taken off Emirates Flight 237 from Dubai at Logan Airport today "do not meet the criteria for any infections of public health concern," including Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome or meningococcal infection.
WCVB reports it's Code Red Hazmat Day at Logan Airport, where a plane arriving from Dubai has basically been quarantined as health workers in moon suits escort out several passengers with flu-like symptoms. None of the five, the station reports, were from West Africa.
So it's probably a good thing he didn't take the T to Harvard Vanguard's Braintree clinic.
In an update on yesterday's situation, Harvard Vanguard reports that when the man, who'd recently returned from Liberia, showed up at its Braintree clinic complaining of headaches and muscle pain, clinicians "quickly ushered [him] out of the building and into his own car to reduce any potential exposure of others:"
UPDATE, 10:30 p.m. The Boston Public Health Commission says:
After discussions with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Boston Public Health Commission and its partners have determined that the patient being evaluated at BIDMC does not meet criteria to be considered someone at high risk for Ebola. The BPHC will continue to monitor this situation.
The Havard Vanguard health center in Braintree was shut this afternoon after a man who'd recently returned from Liberia showed up with possible Ebola symptoms.
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