Partner of Thomas Duncan Speaks to CNN; Interview with Mayor of Dallas
ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. And we're dedicating this hour of CNN to the breaking coverage of the deadly Ebola virus and CNN's exclusive reporting. We are hearing today from the partner of the man who has been diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas, Texas. Our Anderson Cooper just breaking this news. He joins me live now. I want to re-set exactly what it is you have learned from this woman who is under quarantine and has spent all of these days with the man who is at the center of this crisis.</s>COOPER: Right. Her first name is Louise. We're not using her full name. She asked us not to. She has been quarantined. She is in her apartment, the apartment where Thomas Duncan was staying when he came from Liberia to visit with her and her family. She's under quarantine with one of her children who's 13, as well as two nephews who are in their 20s because those were the three young people who were there at the same time that Thomas Duncan was there when he actually got sick. Louise took Thomas Duncan to the hospital the first time. She says she was asked for a Social Security Number for Thomas Duncan. She told the person who was checking them into the hospital that he didn't have a Social Security Number because he'd just come from Liberia. The person checking him in said, OK, that's no problem. Them -</s>BANFIELD: So he wasn't questioned by a nurse necessarily where he was from. She volunteered that information to the hospital?</s>COOPER: She says she did, as related to Social Security. Then she said a second time around to a nurse or some sort of physician's assistant that he had also come from Liberia. So she says she told -</s>BANFIELD: Twice.</s>COOPER: Said twice that he had come from Liberia. Did not seem to raise any red flags. She didn't think about Ebola. It wasn't in her mind. She thought maybe he had malaria. He didn't mention anything about Ebola to the health care workers and the health care workers, when they heard about Liberia, according to Louise, nobody mentioned anything about Ebola or whether he -- asked Thomas Duncan if he had come in contact with anybody who had Ebola. He was sent home with some antibiotic, a prescription, probably antibiotics. When he started the antibiotics, he also started getting very severe diarrhea, made frequent trips to the bathroom.</s>BANFIELD: This is back in the apartment after the first hospital visit?</s>COOPER: Back in the apartment. That's correct. Back in the apartment for several days. He started getting sicker and sicker. Was shivering at night. Sweating in the bed. Louise works -- she says she's a health care attendant or home attendant, so she would be gone at times. She says that she doesn't believe Thomas Duncan left the apartment at any time when he was sick. She wasn't there for sure so she doesn't know 100 percent. But to her knowledge, he didn't leave the apartment.</s>BANFIELD: But she's not been instructed to get rid of the sheets where he was sweating profusely?</s>COOPER: Well, that's the thing that's - that's the thing that's surprising. She -- the towels that Thomas Duncan used she has placed in a plastic bag and she -- they are still in the apartment. The sheets, she said, are still on the bed. She has not been sleeping in the bed she said since Tuesday.</s>BANFIELD: But no one's told her to absolutely bag up everything?</s>COOPER: She's not clear what to do with them.</s>BANFIELD: There's no one from the CDC in a hazmat suit instructing her in the apartment where this man spent presumably four days?</s>COOPER: Well, the CDC has visited the apartment, has talked to her, has told her she cannot leave the apartment, has told her basically she's quarantined for the next 21 days, that there would be legal action if she did leave the apartment, as well as the three others. She is still waiting on word from them or local health officials about what to do with the sheets, what to do with the towels that she herself says she placed in the plastic bags. She said that she did have some Clorox and had tried to clean the apartment, but it's not clear to me how systemic that cleaning was. She insists she does not believe she came in contact with any bodily fluids from Thomas Duncan. It appears they were sleeping in the same bed while he was sweating and was sick. It's not clear to me how extensive their contact was. But she said she does not believe, to her knowledge, that she came in any contact with any fluids.</s>BANFIELD: That is just such a difficult statement to be certain of, though, especially with health care workers who are fully suited up are getting ill, treating or even being amidst Ebola patients. Anderson, great reporting, I know you're going to have a lot more extensive details coming up on your --</s>COOPER: We'll have the interview ready to go tonight.</s>BANFIELD: Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate you getting it on the air as quickly as possible. I appreciate it because I want to go to the Dallas mayor right now, Mike Rawlings, who joins me live on the telephone. Mayor Rawlings, you've heard Anderson's reporting. You have got to agree this is troubling at the very least?</s>MAYOR MIKE RAWLINGS, DALLAS (via telephone): Well, this whole situation is troubling, and that's why we're taking every precaution to make sure we do everything we can as quickly as we can. Dallas County health officials assured me this morning they identified a resource to come in and take those plastic bags away, take those sheets away. That's why this woman is in isolation, to make sure that it if, in fact, she did come in contact with anything from him, and she is infected, that she's going to be kept in isolation. That's a difficult situation for her, but that's the reality of what we've got to do here.</s>BANFIELD: So, Mayor Rawlings, Anderson's reporting, it's so unbelievable to hear that this woman still doesn't know what to do with some of these, you know, possibly infected items inside her apartment. Just to hear that the sheets are still on the bed, we're hearing about sheets being burned regularly out of clinics where Ebola patients have been treated and yet this woman and two other young people, are still in that apartment, effectively could they not be becoming infected and who's running this show?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Well, we've got state officials, we've got county officials, that have a clear path forward. We have locked this apartment down. CDC was very clear to her to ask -- put this material in plastic bags and then we've got to dispose of in a professional and safe manner that resource has been engaged and on the way to take care of it.</s>BANFIELD: Does it not shock you, mayor, there isn't someone from the CDC who is fully suited up and inside that apartment making sure that things that could infect these current family members under quarantine, aren't taken away? I mean the woman doesn't even know, she doesn't think she's had contact. She's been living with this man for those four critical days where he was highly infectious?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Yes. I think it's -- it must be a very scary proposition for her. The CDC has been there. She's got clear marching orders on what to do. We're monitoring this situation. Not only --</s>BANFIELD: I think that's the problem, mayor, she doesn't. She doesn't seem to have the clear marching orders. She doesn't understand what to do. This is why I'm so concerned, is that who is helping her through this? She said to Anderson, I don't know what to do. The sheets are still on the bed. Clearly that's -- that's not a very strong indication that she knows what she's supposed to be doing.</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): So we've hired -- we've got a resource that's going to come and take those sheets away and dispose of them properly. It's got to be done in the way that CDC wants it to be done and that's what they're doing. But it's important to know that we've got other people that have possibly come into contact as well. We've identified those other individuals and taken precautions there as well. So we just can't focus on the apartment, which is really isolated and in control. It's really other folks outside that apartment that we're concerned about as well.</s>BANFIELD: Understandably. You know, a federal official has actually told CNN that the number of those who may have come into contact with this patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, may be upwards of now 100 and that only, I'm going to quote here, only a small set of that group, quote, more than 12 have been identified as having contact and are being monitored. Are you being given regular briefings as to who among that 100 in your metroplex in the Dallas/Fort Worth area may have come in contact and may need to be quarantined as well?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Yes, I have. At least two-thirds of those in that broad list are at the hospital. These are individuals that may have come in contact with a patient, so the hospital is going through their procedures. We've identified up to 25 individuals within the area and we are making sure that everybody, everybody's been talked to, everybody's going to get a protocol that they need to go and participate in and we're going to be playing man-to-man defense on this issue with each of those people.</s>BANFIELD: Let me get those numbers straight. You said about two-thirds of that list. Is that two-thirds of the possible 100 people who may have had some contact either with him or with people who had contact with him? Is that two-thirds of those you've been able to actually identify at this point and that 25 of those people are actually at the hospital?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): You're mixing the numbers here a little bit.</s>BANFIELD: Clear it up for me.</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): We could be upwards of 100, so we don't know exactly the amount. I have not -- I heard the same number from my briefing this morning. I know two-thirds of those, at least two-thirds of those, probably more than that, may have come in contact at the hospital.</s>BANFIELD: OK.</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): And then the remaining were in the area and all the contacts are really in that specific area of Dallas.</s>BANFIELD: And now what about other hospitals? What is happening now? Just the possibility that the same circumstance could play out, Anderson got this exclusive reporting that the woman named Louise actually identified the fact that this was a visitor from Liberia twice at the time that she brought him to the hospital the first time around before he was sent back home. It's remarkable to hear that two separate times she claims she notified the hospital, the patient I'm bringing in right now with the symptoms is from Liberia. What's happening in Dallas/Fort Worth for anybody else who might be coming down with symptoms and going to any other hospital? What's happening to ensure hospitals don't let this slip through the cracks?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Well, obviously everybody has been retrained. They were trained before this incident came into fact. The protocol was correctly implemented with him when he came in the hospital at the beginning. We didn't close the loop, and the doctors didn't see that. I'm not -- I do not understand why there wasn't self-reporting to the doctor examining that he had had contact with Ebola. That we're trying to still figure out. But every hospital knows exactly what to do now and all of our paramedics have been trained. Fortunately they were trained and picked this patient up and saw that he was from west Africa, put in the protocol to make sure they were safe, took him to the hospital, the hospital participated that way and that's why I feel good about those two-thirds number that I gave you that those guys hopefully are in good shape. But our paramedics are in isolation. They will be that way for 21 days. You can't zeros percent chance of contracting this if you don't have bodily fluids, you know, somehow you get in contact with it.</s>BANFIELD: And to that fact, Louise reported to Anderson that there may be some discrepancy to this report, of Mr. Duncan vomiting on the sidewalk outside of the apartment complex as he was being loaded into the ambulance. Have you been given any reports about whether that's possible? Because as we all know, if you look at the reporting in west Africa, these are the things that can cause this to spread, bodily fluids in a public place with unknowing people, children even, walking along those areas. What do you know about that fact?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): The fire and rescue staff did not tell me of that and I assume that did not happen. There are a lot of bad rumors going around, as you can well imagine right now, and that was not part of the report.</s>BANFIELD: I'm sorry. I think I might have lost the mayor's signal.</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Hello?</s>BANFIELD: Do we still have the mayor?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Hello? Hello?</s>BANFIELD: I'm sorry. I lost you for a moment, mayor. I apologize. Can you still hear me?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): I can.</s>BANFIELD: I'm sorry if I interrupted you, but I lost your signal in my ear.</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): OK.</s>BANFIELD: If I interrupted you please continue but I have another question about the condition currently of Thomas Eric Duncan. Do we know how he's doing? Yesterday serious condition, but today?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Yeah. I was told this morning that he is in serious but stable condition. God willing he'll pull through this, and we won't have any other incidents of this in the city. Are you there?</s>BANFIELD: I'm also just getting -- I'm sorry. I'm getting some breaking news as you're speaking as well. I apologize, Mr. Mayor. We're hearing from Wilfred Smallwood, who is the half brother of Thomas Eric Duncan, that when he left Liberia, he was unaware that he had Ebola, which I think we can all safely say sounds pretty logical, considering he had his temperature taken as he was boarding the plane or before he boarded the plane in Liberia. I do have one question for you. I don't know if you can answer this, Mayor but it's been troubling me since I've been getting these facts all morning long, and that is, at the time he boarded that plane and had his temperature taken, would anyone have asked him or would he not have known to say, I've been in contact with a woman, a woman who died of Ebola, a woman I carried physically, hand to hand? Would they have asked those questions? Is a hospital supposed to ask that question, not just where are you from, where have you been, but have you been in contact? I mean it feels like there are a lot of spaces along this map where there was a massive breakdown where Mr. Duncan could have said, I have physically been in contact with a woman, whether he knew she died or not, but who was terribly, terribly sick in Liberia. Do you know anything to that information?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): I don't. It's a good question about why he hasn't -- why he didn't self-report on this. We did capture the fact that he was from west Africa, which was a trigger by itself. If you're from West Africa, that's the trigger. I will tell you we're going to have more information in the press conference this afternoon and probably a lot of your questions, hopefully, will be answered by then.</s>BANFIELD: I'm so glad for that. One last question before I leave you and that is about the Dallas Independent School District. I know that the five children of Louise go to four different schools that span from elementary to middle and high school, and yet as I understand it, none of those schools has closed. There has been disinfecting going on, but what do you know right now about the schools' situation, particularly those schools and all the children who may have come in contact with the children who were in contact with Mr. Duncan?</s>RAWLINGS (via telephone): Well, there's no reason to close the schools down. These students had no exhibited any signs of contracting the disease. Furthermore, the time, the incubation time, couldn't have mathematically happened. So these kids are in good health at this point, shows that they did not -- there was no way they could spread this disease, and school is going on, and we're taking doubling our precautions here. But these kids are safe, and hopefully the children that got in contact with them, in 21 days, we can announce that they're safe as well.</s>BANFIELD: I can't thank you enough, Mayor Rawlings, for taking the time. I'm assuming this is very a busy time for you, and we will look forward to your news conference later this afternoon. What time will that be, sir? Do you have it scheduled yet?</s>RAWLINGS: We're finalizing it. Thank you for your interest.</s>BANFIELD: I appreciate you taking the time. Well, this is a critical story and critical information get out to people, and thank you, again, Mayor Mike Rawlings joining us live on the telephone from the Dallas area. Just a quick update, our Anderson Cooper with a breaking story, an exclusive interview with the who is effectively the domestic partner of this patient, Thomas Eric Duncan, who spent that time actually, caring for him in her apartment with not only one of her children but two of her nephews, as well, present. The sheets still on the bed where he slept and presumably with that high fever sweated profusely. The towels bagged up in that apartment but still in that apartment, and they still in that apartment under quarantine. There's so much more to get at with regard to what else could happen here, how these people are going to maneuver through their lives, and what you need to be concerned about, not just if you're in the Dallas area, but don't forget -- this person went through Dulles Airport in Washington as well before landing at DFW. Dr. Sanjay Gupta is going to join me live after the break.