Ebola: Dallas Nurse improving + hospital admits Duncan didn't receive adequate care

DALLAS (Reuters) - The United States is establishing a rapid-response team to help hospitals "within hours" whenever there is a case of Ebola, the top doctor leading the response to the deadly virus said on Tuesday.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Dr. Thomas Frieden, acknowledging the lapses in treatment in Dallas for a Liberian man in late September told reporters:

"I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed ... but we will do that from today onward with any case in the U.S.," Frieden said.

"We will be there, hands on, within hours, helping hospitals with the situation if there is another case," he said.

The nurse who contracted Ebola from the Liberian patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, in a Texas hospital said on Tuesday she was doing well, while Frieden said 76 people were still being monitored in the Dallas area.

The nurse, 26-year-old Vietnamese-American Nina Pham, became the first person infected by Ebola in the United States while caring for Duncan for much of his 11 days at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. He died on Oct. 8.

Pham received a transfusion on Monday containing antibodies to fight the virus, according to a Roman Catholic priest in Pham's congregation. Duncan did not receive one because he did not match the donor's blood type.

Christian relief group Samaritan's Purse has said that Kent Brantly, a doctor who survived an Ebola infection, donated plasma to Pham.

“I’m doing well and want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers," Pham said in a statement released by the hospital. "I am blessed by the support of family and friends."

Two nurses from Emory University's Serious Communicable Disease Unit are now on the ground working with the Dallas hospital on the proper use of personal protective gear.

WHO Assistant Director-General Bruce Aylward said on Tuesday that by the first week in December, WHO projections suggest there may be between 5,000 and 10,000 new cases a week in impoverished Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

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