How will NYC's Ebola response differ from Dallas'?
After a New York City doctor tested positive for Ebola, all eyes are on the nation's most populous city to see how it handles the situation compared to the response that unfolded in Dallas at Texas Health Presbyterian, which saw two of its nurses become infected after treating patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who later died.
According to CBS News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook, the situations couldn't be more different.
"In Dallas, Mr. Duncan walked in with Ebola. He was initially sent away then came back. They really were not prepared. Here [in New York City] you have a doctor who was self-monitoring," LaPook said Friday on "CBS This Morning." "The minute he got symptoms, he put himself in isolation, was brought to Bellevue, which is a designated center for treating Ebola in the city."
Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, worked at an Ebola treatment center in Guinea with Doctors Without Borders. When he returned to New York, where he is an emergency care physician at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, he was taking his temperature twice a day.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the response to Spencer's infection a "textbook case of how the situation should be handled" and assured everything that could have been done was done properly.
Cuomo also said New York had an advantage.
"We watched what happened in Dallas. And Dallas in many ways was at a disadvantage because they were the case of first impression. We have been preparing for weeks and weeks, literally," Cuomo said on "CBS This Morning."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a training session Tuesday in New York with 5,000 health care workers at the Javits Convention Center, covering the CDC's new Ebola response protocols and recommendations.
"So our health care workers feel trained, they feel prepared, they have the equipment. We did the drills," Cuomo said.
He said there are eight designated hospitals in New York fully prepared to handle Ebola cases.