--- title: Ebola Outbreak: CDC Faces Growing Fears description: A flood of calls, but no confirmed Ebola cases canonical: https://time.com/3083184/ebola-cdc-outbreak/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-08-05T20:15:13.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T08:58:00.661Z article:section: Health og:title: Ebola Outbreak: CDC Faces Growing Fears og:description: A flood of calls, but no confirmed Ebola cases og:url: https://time.com/3083184/ebola-cdc-outbreak/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt32c35d98b22707e7/69869e5e810bbb02d8c92e22/89001431.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 4730 og:image:height: 2661 og:image:alt: 89001431 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ebola Outbreak: CDC Faces Growing Fears twitter:description: A flood of calls, but no confirmed Ebola cases twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt32c35d98b22707e7/69869e5e810bbb02d8c92e22/89001431.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Feds Face Growing Ebola Fears > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=0732f08b-a979-498b-a0e8-7fbd03db4c6a&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: How Suits Protect Doctors From Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): How Suits Protect Doctors From Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/O5USUvDI.m3u8) (2:12)  _Published 2014-08-04. While people rely on doctors to stop the Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, doctors rely on suits to protect them._ by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Aug 5, 2014 8:15 PM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) ## TIME Staff Aug 5, 2014 8:15 PM UTC Federal health officials are facing a surge in reports of possible Ebola cases from hospitals and health departments, none of which have been confirmed but which highlight a moment of growing domestic concern about [an outbreak that has claimed over 800 lives in Africa.](http://time.com/3079466/nigeria-second-ebola-victim/) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told TIME on Tuesday that it’s received several dozen calls from states and hospitals about people who are ill after traveling in Africa. “We’ve triaged those calls and about half-dozen or so resulted in specimen coming to CDC for testing and all have been negative for Ebola,” CDC spokesman Tom Skinner said, adding that the agency is expecting still more calls to come in. More than 1,000 people have been infected with the deadly disease in West Africa and more than 800 have died, making it the worst Ebola outbreak in history. Two Americans who were infected in Africa have since [returned to the U.S. for treatment](http://time.com/3082619/ebola-atlanta-american-nancy-writebol/). Health officials said a patient tested for Ebola at a New York City hospital Monday was likely not infected. It’s clear concern over the virus is building in the U.S. But individual patients being tested for Ebola shouldn’t be cause for panic, health experts say. So far all questionable cases have been quickly reported to the CDC—and all have tested negative. Even if the disease were to present in an American patient, CDC Director Tom Frieden has sought to reassure the public it wouldn’t spread, and that any hospital with an intensive care unit can successfully treat a patient with Ebola. “We are confident that we will not have significant spread of Ebola, even if we were to have a patient with Ebola here,” Frieden told reporters last week. [A patient at Mount Sinai hospital](http://time.com/3080189/ebola-mt-sinai-new-york/) in New York City and a patient in Columbus, Ohio were reported to be in isolation under suspicion of Ebola this week. The Columbus patient [tested negative](http://www.whio.com/news/news/local/columbus-patient-tests-negative-ebola/ngwC7/), and the New York City patient is “stable and in good spirits,” according to the hospital. The CDC is still testing the New York patient’s specimen, but officials don’t believe the patient has Ebola. Still, hospitals are making sure they are prepared. In a great coincidence, Dr. David Reich, president and chief operating officer at Mount Sinai, [told TIME ](http://time.com/3080189/ebola-mt-sinai-new-york/)that the hospital had spent last weekend (days before the currently isolated patient entered the emergency room) training for the possibility of an Ebola patient in their hospital. That training consisted of making sure they were prepared to quickly isolate a patient and begin infection control protocol. There have been more than 1,600 reported cases of Ebola and over 887 deaths in Nigeria, Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Over the next month, the CDC will be sending 50 disease specialists to the region to try to contain the disease. ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] We touch our face about 1, 000 times a day. And these suits are about 115, 116 degrees you can, and you're losing three to five liters of sweat every time you go in, inside these suits. You can imagine. That you just want to rub your eyes or rub the sweat from your face, and you can't do that because that's an opportunity to come into contact with the virus. I was recently deployed on behalf of the World Health Organization to to Guinea to help with the Ebola outbreak. When you're providing care to patients, you're constantly being exposed to blood, vomit, diarrhea, every bodily fluid that's there. I'm sure you've seen pictures of the personal protection equipment or PPE that we're required to wear. We start with a base layer of scrubs, and then these thick rubber boots that come up to our knees. It's on top of the scrubs and the boots, we actually wear, an impermeable Tyvek suit, that, is incredibly hot. And then we also wear two pairs of gloves. On top of the tivex suit we have to put a hood, that is an impermeable hood that covers every other part of our, part of our head. We have to wear a respirator that covers our nose and our mouth, and then finally a pair of goggles that cover, cover our eyes on top of the hood. So basically, literally nothing is left uncovered. So that's just getting dressed. The PPE itself is, is a good first step. But even with all these protective equipments you're still handling needles. And you're still being exposed to, to patients' body fluids. We talk a lot about how how difficult the working conditions are. And how hot it and how restrictive these suits are but, I would say it comes nowhere near the difficult experience that it must be to be a patient. To be infected with it. Or to be the loved one of a patient who's going through that. And for me, that's something that I always think about. [ MUSIC ] That's the thing about this virus, it's actually... I hate to say the word easy, but it's really easy to control. 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