NanoViricides Inc. (NNVC)

[changes_iv]

New US rules for air passengers are NOT enough for people coming from West Africa.

New US rules requiring air passengers from the three West African countries worst hit by Ebola to travel via one of five airports are coming into effect.

Travellers from Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea must now arrive at O'Hare in Chicago, JFK, Newark, Washington's Dulles or Atlanta, where they will undergo enhanced screening.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29719240

The people must be quarantined for 31 days before entering the US. It cannot be voluntary, it must be mandatory, over there in West Africa.

Because Philips' daughter, Jennifer, who traveled through O'Hare International Airport on Oct. 11 on her way from Liberia, reported no exposure to Ebola and showed no sign of illness, a mandatory quarantine is not legally or scientifically supported under current protocols, local health officials said.

But Theresa Berg, health department administrator for Rock Island County, which borders Iowa in western Illinois, requested the voluntary isolation as "an extra precaution for safety," according to an online statement.

Barhyeau Philips said neither he, Jennifer, 21, nor the rest of his family has any fever or symptoms, but he agreed to the isolation to allay any concerns.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-ebola-quarantine-illinois-met-20141020-story.html

MP: Is there anything you’d like to see the CDC and other public health officials do that they haven’t done so far here in the United States?

MO: First of all, we have to acknowledge where our shortcomings are. The idea that all 5,000 hospitals in the United States will be able to take care of an Ebola patient — that’s simply not true. And we don’t want to do that. We want to have regional centers throughout the United States where both patient care and worker safety can be addressed. We also need to have every hospital, every doctor’s office, every private minute-clinic type environment be able to recognize potential cases of Ebola. If you have a travel history in the last 21 days of having been to West Africa, no matter what illness you’re being seen for, [the medical staff] has to consider Ebola.

As for the idea about fever, we have a real concern about that because it’s potentially a very spotty standard. I personally have received information from clinicians in West Africa where potentially 20 percent or more of the patients have no fever and they die of Ebola. Fever is present most of the time, but I don’t want to see a case fall through the cracks because they didn’t present with fever. A constellation of other symptoms combined with the fact that they were in West Africa within the past few weeks should absolutely raise suspicion — even if you find another illness. We’re now finding patients who present with both malaria and Ebola, or cholera and Ebola. So we have to rule out Ebola, and that needs to be done safely. If they come into a community hospital, we have to have the expertise to handle them safely there. But they shouldn’t receive clinical care as such. At that point they need to be moved on to a regional treatment facility where they get the kind of care they deserve and where the workers are protected.

http://www.minnpost.com/second-opinion/2014/10/u-ms-osterholm-what-we-should-and-shouldnt-be-worried-about-regarding-ebola

Does it cost money to build quarantine facilities? Yes, but here it will also cost money and potentially lives as we do not know what is the genetic code of the virus (or how virulent) of the potentially Ebola infected person.

The second possibility is one that virologists are loath to discuss openly but are definitely considering in private: that an Ebola virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air. You can now get Ebola only through direct contact with bodily fluids. But viruses like Ebola are notoriously sloppy in replicating, meaning the virus entering one person may be genetically different from the virus entering the next. The current Ebola virus’s hyper-evolution is unprecedented; there has been more human-to-human transmission in the past four months than most likely occurred in the last 500 to 1,000 years. Each new infection represents trillions of throws of the genetic dice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/opinion/what-were-afraid-to-say-about-ebola.html?_r=0

Example of the steep costs of care for Ebola...

University of Kansas Hospital’s Ebola scare shows the steep costs of care

Start with a $100,000 order for more personal protective equipment than usual and the price quickly mounted when the University of Kansas Hospital last week cared for a possible Ebola patient.

Add about $8,000 to $10,000 worth of heavy plastic sheeting and materials used to seal off the isolation area from the rest of the hospital.

Count in nursing overtime. Tally extra costs for hazardous waste removal. Figure in communication costs to handle the media. And note that an entire seven-bed intensive care unit — which usually would have been filled with other patients — was devoted to the care of just one person.

“There were major categories of costs and expenses above and beyond what we’d necessarily have for any other patient,” said Chris Ruder, vice president of patient care services at the hospital.

The Kansas City, Kan., Ebola scare, which turned out to be more of an infectious disease practice event, gave the hospital a clear window into the cost of best-practice care for the infectious and often fatal disease. By using equipment and procedures that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has since said are the right things to do, KU Hospital had an expensive 48-hour experience.

The full bill isn’t known, but a recap of those stressful days hints at what any medical center might face if a possible Ebola sufferer comes to its doors.

“For example, everything the physicians and nurses wore when they went into the patient’s room was completely disposable,” Ruder said. “And we had six nurses at any one time taking care of that one patient — a twelvefold increase in nursing care instead of the usual one nurse taking care of two patients in the ICU — plus physicians and a dedicated infectious disease team. The ratio of human resource to one patient was exorbitantly higher.”

The expensive, airtight protective suits, hoods, gloves and respirators could only be worn for two to four hours at a stretch before the workers became drenched in sweat. The hospital even bought underwear, socks and booties in all sizes for the workers to wear because they also had to be disposed of after each two- to four-hour service time.

Separately, the International Association of Fire Fighters calculated an average cost of $382.31 for one set of personal protective equipment that would be considered adequate for a first responder to handle a possible Ebola victim.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article3197445.html#storylink=cpy

It is possible another company may be able to solve the quarantine wait problem.

FDA actively blocking fast Ebola detection technology in America

According to military news site Defense One:

It's a toaster-sized box called FilmArray, produced by a company called BioFire, a subsidiary of bioMerieux and it's capable of detecting Ebola with a high degree of confidence -- in under an hour.

Incredibly, it was present at Dallas Presbyterian Hospital when Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan walked through the door, complaining of fever and he had just come from Liberia. Duncan was sent home, but even still, FDA guidelines prohibited the hospital from using the machine to screen for Ebola.

Government bureaucracy preventing its use

The machine sells for about $39,000 a piece and is capable of screening for the genetic markers of a number of respiratory, gastrointestinal and other pathogens, and that includes the Ebola virus. However, it has to have the correct "kit" in place.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/047315_Ebola_detection_testing_technology_FDA.html#ixzz3GnVmB600

...FilmArray system from BioFire Diagnostics has set a new standard in molecular diagnostics. Featuring unmatched usability, the FilmArray’s Respiratory and Blood Culture Identifications panels are comprehensive and, combined, test for more than a hundred pathogens. With unmatched ease-of-use, FilmArray requires just 2 minutes of hands-on-time and returns results in about 1 hour. That’s a feat no other product on the market can match. Physicians attain answers sooner. Laboratories maximize productivity and reduce costs.

If we have porous borders we just have another reason, Ebola, to address/solve the problem.