WASHINGTON — U.S. officials have designated 35 hospitals around the country to care for Ebola patients, part of the Obama administration’s effort in the past two months to improve domestic preparedness to cope with the deadly virus that has ravaged West Africa.
The hospitals were chosen by state health officials and hospital executives and assessed by infection control teams from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to make sure they have adequate staff, equipment, training and resources “to provide the extensive treatment necessary to care for an Ebola patient,” according to a senior administration official.
“This is a big step forward in terms of domestic preparedness in terms of any Ebola cases that might arrive here,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the list had not been made public. Located in key parts of the country, the hospitals are “within 200 miles of 80 percent of where returning travelers will wind up in the United States,” he said.
Nearly two dozen hospitals are located near the five international airports — John F. Kennedy in New York; Newark Liberty; Washington Dulles; O’Hare in Chicago and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta — that travelers from Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Mali are required to use when arriving in the United States.
They include Bellevue Hospital Center in New York; Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J.; Johns Hopkins in Baltimore; MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.; Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago; and Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
Other hospitals are in communities where West African immigrants live, including Philadelphia, New Jersey, California and Minnesota. They include Kaiser Oakland Medical Center in Oakland, Calif., and the Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis.
The 35 designated hospitals will have total treatment capacity of 53 beds.
In trying to establish a network of hospitals, U.S. officials have run into reluctance from facilities worried about steep costs, unwanted attention and the possibility of scaring away other patients.
The reticence, although perhaps not surprising, complicates government efforts to ensure that the country can effectively treat people with Ebola and contain possible outbreaks.
Until October, only a few facilities in the United States with special biocontainment units, which are ideal for treating Ebola, were able to care for patients. And they could only handle two or three patients at a time. The case of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was initially misdiagnosed at a Dallas hospital and died Oct. 8, shows how easily a community hospital can stumble.
The Obama administration’s $6.2 billion emergency funding request for Ebola, which includes $154 million for hospital preparedness and support, envisions at least one designated facility in every state, and additional ones in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and Puerto Rico.
The White House wants Congress to approve the request by Dec. 11, when current government funding runs out.President Obama is scheduled to give an update on hospital readiness and domestic preparedness when he visits the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda later Tuesday to tour the Vaccine Research Center to congratulate research teams on the first published results from Phase 1 clinical trials of a promising Ebola vaccine candidate. Obama will be making a push for prompt congressional action on the funding request to fight Ebola in West Africa and shore up U.S. readiness.
In addition to the 35 hospitals that have already been designated, officials want to establish at least another 20 facilities, the official said. When that can be done will depend on how quickly Congress approves the emergency request.
“A combination of confidence and a sense of civic duty and medical prestige led these 35 to come forward and put their hands up,” the official said. In addition to being prepared to treat Ebola patients, the infection-control measures in place at these hospitals will improve overall resilience and is “a great investment in their ability to deal with dangerous and infectious diseases.”
On an average day, there are a total of 50 to 70 travelers arriving from the affected countries at all five airports, officials have said. Ten people have been treated for Ebola in the United States, and federal officials say the number of future cases is likely to be extremely small — in large part because airport screening and follow-up monitoring allows health authorities to spot possible cases and refer them to hospitals for treatment.
Last week, NIH researchers announced the completion of an early-stage human trial for an Ebola vaccine, which is being developed in collaboration with European drug maker GlaxoSmithKline. The results, which show that the vaccine triggered an immune response and did not cause harm in a small group of volunteers, paved the way for large-scale trials that could begin as soon as next month in West Africa. Based on a chimpanzee cold virus called chimp adenovirus type 3, the vaccine is designed to deliver pieces of genetic material from two Ebola species: Sudan and Zaire, the type responsible for the current epidemic in West Africa.
Meanwhile, early clinical trials of another potential vaccine are underway at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and at NIH, with initial results expected by the end of the year. That vaccine, developed by the Public Health Agency of Canada along with Iowa-based NewLink Genetics and pharmaceutical company Merck, also could head into larger trials next year.
In addition, Johnson & Johnson recently announced that it also would team with NIH and commit up to $200 million to accelerate the development of its own Ebola vaccine, with the goal of producing 250,000 doses by May.