As the first Ebola patient in the nation’s history began receiving an experimental treatment in Dallas on Monday, Gov. Rick Perry signed an executive order at the Capitol to create a 17-member infectious disease task force.
Dr. Brett Giroir, the CEO of Texas A&M’s Health Science Center, will lead the physicians and scientists and state officials that make up the task force, which Perry said was created to offer support during and after a public health emergency such as this
“Infectious disease outbreaks are real, they are inevitable and even more likely given our interconnected world, where an outbreak anywhere is a risk everywhere,” Giroir said. “Therefore we must be fully prepared as a state to address this challenge”
The order comes just shy of a week after a Liberian national was diagnosed in Dallas with Ebola, the first-ever in the country’s history. Thomas Eric Duncan, 42, is in critical condition at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas.
Hospital officials announced Monday that he is now receiving the medicine known as brincidofovir, an oral antiviral manufactured by the Durham, North Carolina company Chimerix. The medicine has been used to treat viruses such as adenovirus and smallpox, which has researchers hopeful it will have a similar impact on treating Ebola.
“Based on in vitro data from work conducted by the CDC and the National Institutes of Health suggesting brincidofovir’s activity against Ebola, we are hopeful that brincidofovir may offer a potential treatment for Ebola Virus Disease during this outbreak,” said Dr. M. Michelle Berrey, Chimerix CEO in a statement.
Meanwhile, in Austin, Perry signed the executive order to develop a comprehensive long-term plan to handle this and other similar emergencies, including building on the state’s existing management plan. Perry also called for the federal government to boost its screening procedures and establish quarantine stations at international airports to help prevent another case of Ebola arriving in the U.S.