--- title: The CDC Received Over 90 Calls About Potential Ebola Cases Before Dallas Patient description: The Dallas patient is the 13th patient in the U.S. tested by the CDC canonical: https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-01T19:01:59.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:05:29.520Z article:section: Health og:title: CDC Received Over 90 Calls About Potential Ebola Cases Before Dallas Patient og:description: The Dallas patient is the 13th patient in the U.S. tested by the CDC og:url: https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: CDC Received Over 90 Calls About Potential Ebola Cases Before Dallas Patient twitter:description: The Dallas patient is the 13th patient in the U.S. tested by the CDC twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # CDC Received Over 90 Calls About Potential Ebola Cases Before Dallas Patient > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. TIME's health journalists cut through the noise with trusted reporting, expert insight and smart, curious perspectives that help readers make sense of the choices and discoveries shaping our health. 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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 daily 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 daily 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. ## Video: Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8) (2:32)  _Published 2014-08-13. Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Oct 1, 2014 7:01 PM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Oct 1, 2014 7:01 PM UTC On the afternoon of Sept. 28, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) epidemic intelligence officers—sometimes referred to as disease detectives—received a call from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas concerned about a patient the hospital thought could be at risk for Ebola. This was at least the 90th call the team had received during the Ebola outbreak from hospitals concerned that one of their patients could possibly be infected. But until Tuesday, there had never been a diagnosed case. CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a press conference on Tuesday that “As long as the outbreak continues in Africa, we need to be on-guard.” The statement rings true since the U.S. now has its first patient, but the CDC has been awaiting the possibility that Ebola would make it to American soil for months. On Sunday afternoon, an epidemic intelligence service officer took the hospital through a decision-tree of sorts that helps the CDC determine whether the patient is at a real risk for Ebola. Factors that are taken into account are where the patient had traveled in the past and what their symptoms were. Since the patient continued through the CDC’s algorithm with enough red flags, the CDC requested that the patient be isolated and that a blood specimen be sent to the CDC’s level 4 testing lab for confirmation. **MORE:** [Inside the CDC’s Emergency Operations Center Tackling Ebola](http://time.com/3094769/inside-the-cdcs-emergency-operations-center-tackling-ebola/) The Dallas patient is the 13th person that the CDC has actually tested for Ebola. “Every morning, Dr. Frieden is updated on all of the individuals that we have looked at and the numerous individuals under investigation,” a CDC spokesperson told TIME. There have been a few false alarms already, including patients in [New York City](http://time.com/3087814/cdc-new-york-patient-does-not-have-ebola-virus/) and [Miami](http://time.com/3304323/ebola-miami-negative-test/)—all eventually tested negative. The CDC campus is in Atlanta, Georgia, and since early August, the headquarters has had its [Emergency Operations Center](http://time.com/3094769/inside-the-cdcs-emergency-operations-center-tackling-ebola/) on a Level 1 response—the highest possible level for a public health crisis. Just a couple days after the CDC kicked operations into high gear, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak in West Africa a global public health emergency. In the Emergency Operations Center, several epidemic intelligence officers sit in rows of long tables tapping away at their computers facing a wall of computer screens that show where Ebola clusters are in West Africa, as well as graphs of the disease’s trajectory. The officers offer aid both domestically and to their colleagues in the field. Many have been traveling in and out of West Africa since the spring. After the CDC determined that the patient, [reportedly](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/44a12c35649f4f6782fcb3c9f476da09/ebola-case-stokes-concerns-liberians-dallas) a man named Thomas Eric Duncan, was indeed at a very high risk for the disease, the hospital sent blood specimens for testing to both the CDC’s lab as well as a Texas Health Department lab. The specimens arrived at the CDC around 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning, and by Tuesday afternoon, both the CDC and the Texas Health Department had confirmed that the patient was in fact positive for Ebola. “We made sure the hospital spoke with the patient and their family first,” said a CDC spokesperson to TIME. Once the patient was told they were positive, the CDC quickly informed the public by sending out a confirmation to media late Tuesday afternoon and holding a press conference an hour later. During that time, CDC disease specialists were already deploying to Dallas—landing on Tuesday evening to begin the process of tracking down and monitoring all the people that the patient with Ebola had come in contact with while infectious. It’s a process that will continue until the 21-day incubation period of the disease ends. Though the Dallas patient is the first patient to have confirmed Ebola, the CDC has long said that an Ebola patient making it to the U.S. was always a possibility. However, due to the quality of health care in the United States, patients are not facing the same dire situations as patients in Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea, and Ebola in the states will likely have a much different prognosis. ## Transcript This Ebola outbreak is unprecedented. This is definitely a marathon and not a sprint. The bugs have evolved. The outbreak has gotten bigger. We are only as strong as the weakest link, and we have learned from Ebola that West Africa was a very weak link. [ MUSIC ] There's small clinics, these are like one room places where sick people might go in their house with maybe an auxiliary nurse as some one who has a little bit of medical training, but defiantly not the same standards that we would have here in the US. We're facing 3 main threats. The first is the threat of new organisms. It was coming and spreading in different places. The second is drug- resistant bacteria, and the third are intentionally created organisms. What we do in an outbreak response is continuously see how can we make it better. The exercises we've gone through both, re- evaluating our own protocols but also understanding what the public and governmental responses are has really helped us understand. How to take care of these patients in the larger context of our healthcare systems. And, those who are in the building, I would urge you to come down to either the ops team room, or the, When designing a unit that is designed to accept patients with serious communicable diseases, like Ebola, there are ways to design a unit so that it's function. Functional. Any hospital that can isolate a patient in a single patient room with a bathroom and can follow our infection control recommendations is capable of safely caring for a patient with Ebola. And we've tried to encourage every single hospital in the country to have an antibiotic stewardship program to improve antibiotic prescribing practices. There is a concern about fatigue as we go on that, the CDC other groups have sort of ramping up now to try to surge resources into the area. What we're also realizing is, we need to be able to maintain that surge for many months to keep the pressure on to completely control the outbreak. Time will tell in the next few weeks if we can start to see those numbers going in the right direction. Fewer new cases each day or each week. The single most important thing to understand about protecting Americans from Ebola is that can best be done by stopping it at the source in Africa. Its normal to be scared of something as deadly as Ebola and for the general public I really hope we can never let our fear undermine our compassion. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/"},"headline":"CDC Received Over 90 Calls About Potential Ebola Cases Before Dallas Patient","datePublished":"2014-10-01T19:01:59.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:05:29.520Z","description":"The Dallas patient is the 13th patient in the U.S. tested by the CDC","url":"https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/","keywords":["ebola","CDC","diagnosis","Infectious Disease","Dallas","Ebola outbreak"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Alexandra Sifferlin","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/ebola/","name":"ebola"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/","name":"CDC Received Over 90 Calls About Potential Ebola Cases Before Dallas Patient"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","description":"Meet The CDC Doctors Fighting Ebola","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/G194AmTC/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-08-13T23:41:12.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/G194AmTC.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/","duration":"PT2M32S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3453219/cdc-received-over-90-calls-about-potential-ebola-cases-before-dallas-patient/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```