--- title: U.S. Ebola: Texas Patient Contacts Being Traced description: In order to contain a possible outbreak, the CDC will retrace every step Liberian man Thomas Eric Duncan took since he was infected canonical: https://time.com/3455167/us-texas-ebola-patient-tracing-contacts/ author: Helen Regan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-02T08:55:18.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:32:18.839Z article:section: Health og:title: Texas Ebola Patient Contacts to Be Traced og:description: Officials are monitoring at least a dozen people, including five children, but that number will likely increase. og:url: https://time.com/3455167/us-texas-ebola-patient-tracing-contacts/ 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: Texas Ebola Patient Contacts to Be Traced twitter:description: Officials are monitoring at least a dozen people, including five children, but that number will likely increase. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Anyone Who Came Into Contact With the Texas Ebola Patient Is Being Tracked Down > Sponsored content. 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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. by [Helen Regan](https://time.com/author/helen-regan/) ## Helen Regan Oct 2, 2014 8:55 AM UTC by [Helen Regan](https://time.com/author/helen-regan/) ## Helen Regan Oct 2, 2014 8:55 AM UTC The director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday they are monitoring a Liberian man found to have Ebola in Dallas, as well as anyone he may have come into contact with. Dr. Thomas Frieden said the agency would retrace every step Thomas Eric Duncan took in order to contain a possible outbreak. “This is a tried and true reliable public-health strategy. We go from the moment he could have been infected, which is probably around the 24th, last Wednesday, and we retrace every step, every contact where he might have had direct physical contact with somebody, and for each one of those contacts, we will monitor them for 21 days after exposure, in conjunction with the local and state health department and the hospital to see if they develop symptoms,” he said. Frieden was confident that an outbreak would not happen. “That’s how you stop an Ebola outbreak. That’s what we’ll do in this case. There’s no doubt in my mind that we can stop it in its tracks here.” Officials are monitoring at least a [dozen](http://online.wsj.com/articles/some-children-possibly-exposed-to-u-s-ebola-patient-1412188681) people, including five children, the _Wall Street Journal_ reports, but that number is likely to increase. Duncan was admitted to hospital last Friday, but despite telling medical staff that he had recently visited Liberia, he was allowed to go home on a course of [antibiotics](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/ebola-us-doctors-texas-liberia). So far, none of the people believed to have come into contact with the infected man have shown any symptoms of the disease. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3455167/us-texas-ebola-patient-tracing-contacts/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3455167/us-texas-ebola-patient-tracing-contacts/"},"headline":"Anyone Who Came Into Contact With the Texas Ebola Patient Is Being Tracked Down","datePublished":"2014-10-02T08:55:18.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:32:18.839Z","description":"Officials are monitoring at least a dozen people, including five children, but that number will likely increase","url":"https://time.com/3455167/us-texas-ebola-patient-tracing-contacts/","keywords":["ebola","U.S.","outbreak"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Helen Regan","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/helen-regan/"}],"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/3455167/us-texas-ebola-patient-tracing-contacts/","name":"Anyone Who Came Into Contact With the Texas Ebola Patient Is Being Tracked Down"}}]}] ```