Return to Transcripts main page

Wolf

Nurse Vinson, Cured of Ebola, Leaving Hospital; Vinson Press Conference; Discussion of Current Status of Ebola Fight

Aired October 28, 2014 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news, any moment now, we're expecting Amber Vinson to make an appearance. The nurse is now Ebola- free after a harrowing ordeal. You're going to hear her first words since getting released from the hospital.

The New Jersey Governor Chris Christie getting slammed by the left and the right for his handling of the recent Ebola scare in his state. But in true fashion, Governor Christie, he's not budging.

And as for that nurse, Kaci Hickox, she's back in Maine today. She insists she's fine and doctors gave her a clean bill of health. So, why are residents in Maine there, at least some of them, pretty upset at her return?

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN break news.

BLITZER: Hello, I'm Wolf Blitzer. It's 1:00 p.m. here in Washington, 5:00 p.m. in London, 7:00 p.m. in Ankara, Turkey, 8:00 p.m. in Baghdad. Wherever you're watching from around the news, thanks very much for joining us.

We're watching the breaking news here this hour. Ebola-free and speaking out. Any moment now, Amber Vinson will be making a statement. Vinson is being released from Emory University Hospital after recovering from Ebola. She was one of two nurses infected with the virus at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. The other nurse, Nina Pham, she was released from NIH, the National Institutes of Health Hospital, on Friday, right outside of Washington in Bethesda, Maryland.

Both nurses contracted Ebola after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian that was visiting friends in Dallas. He died from the disease. We're going to bring you the news conference, Amber Vinson's remarks live. Stand by for that. All of our cameras are ready. There are a lot of people in that room getting ready to receive her. They are really happy that she is doing just fine. She is Ebola-free right now.

Let's bring in CNN National Reporter Nick Valencia. He's over at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Also joining us, Dr. Seema Yasmin, former disease detective for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention here in the United States. She's now a staff writer for "The Dallas Morning News."

All right, Nick, set the scene for us. Walk us through what we're about to see.

NICK VALENCIA, CNN NATIONAL REPORTER: Well, hey, Wolf, we are expecting to hear from Amber Vinson, her first public comments since doctors said that she is clear of the Ebola Virus. She landed here in Atlanta at Emory University Hospital on October 15th having been transferred from her home hospital, Texas Presbyterian, they say because of a staffing issue. Now, also, there is a remarkable precedence set by Emory University in their Serious Communicable Disease Unit. They have had four patients that they have treated for the Ebola Virus. All of them -- all of them have been treated and released.

Now, Wolf, I understand that Amber Vinson --

BLITZER: All right.

VALENCIA: -- may be making her way to the podium. We'll send it back to you so you can update our viewers.

BLITZER: There she is. She's sitting down right now with a nice, big smile. You see the doctors there, the nurses there, the men and women who helped her recover from Ebola. She's very happy. Her grandparents, we're told, they are there as well. So many of the nurses at Emory University Hospital wanted to be there because she is a nurse. She's one of our own, they said. So, she's a pretty happy young lady right now. She's going to be going back to Dallas.

Let's listen to Vince Dollard, the communications spokesman there at Emory University Hospital. He's going to introduce Dr. Bruce Ribner.

VINCENT DOLLARD, ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT COMMUNICATIONS, EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: (In progress) -- who is Director of Emory University's -- Emory University Hospital's Serious Communicable Disease Unit. Miss Amber Vinson, our patient, and with Miss Vinson are members of her family. Her grandparents, Mr. Lawrence Vinson Sr., Charlotte Vinson, her uncle, Lawrence Vinson, and her aunt, Cheryl Vinson.

Dr. Ribner will make a statement. Amber will make a statement and will not take any questions. After Amber's statement, we will do a brief Q and A and then depart. And I would ask that you respect our patient's privacy and not shout any questions and allow Amber and her family to depart in privacy. Thank you -- Dr. Ribner.

DR. BRUCE RIBNER, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, SERIOUS COMMUNICABLE DISEASE UNIT, EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: Good afternoon and thank you for coming today. As you've already heard, I am Bruce Ribner, Medical Director of the Serious Communicable Diseases Unit at Emory University Hospital. I lead the team of physicians, nurses, laboratory technologists, chaplains and a host of other people who are so critically important for caring for our patients in our unit.

Today, I'm pleased to announce that Amber Vinson is being discharged from Emory University Hospital. After a rigorous course of treatment and thorough testing, we have determined that Miss Vinson has recovered from her infection with the Ebola Virus and that she can return to her family, to the community and to her life without any concerns about transmitting this virus to any other individuals.

Speaking on behalf of everyone at Emory University Hospital, we are pleased with Miss Vinson's recovery and grateful for our opportunity to apply our training, care and experience in meeting her medical needs.

As fellow members of the health care community, we deeply admire Miss Vinson's courage and dedication in caring for patients with serious communicable diseases. Nurses are on the front lines 24 hours a day in treating our patients. And it is their skill, their knowledge and their passion for healing that makes one of the critical differences in caring for our patients.

Now that Ebola Virus transmission has occurred in the United States, we all recognize that there is a lot of anxiety in the community and that is understandable. But the American health care system has been able to successfully treat patients with Ebola Virus Disease. We have the resources. We have the expertise. And we have the knowledge. We must not let fear get in the way of our primary mission which is caring for patients with serious diseases such as Ebola Virus infection.

As grateful as we are for Miss Vinson's recovery, we do recognize that our role as the American health care system and our nation's role is far from over. Emory has taken the lead in posting our protocols online as well as participating in Webinars, answering myriads of phone calls and e-mails in trying to spread knowledge of the management of this disease around the world. We continue to collaborate with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with the National Institutes of Health, with the Food and Drug Administration and the many professional organizations which are -- have been involved in fighting this terrible outbreak.

We also would like to acknowledge the many government officials at all levels, local, state and national, who have assisted us from the time we started to care for our first patient with Ebola Virus Disease. We also want to acknowledge and thank our colleagues at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. We have been privileged to care for one of the members of their team and we are delighted that Miss Vinson will be rejoining her community soon.

As Mr. Dollard said, I will be answering your questions in a moment. But before I do so, Miss Vinson would like to make a statement. She will not be taking any questions, and we ask that you respect her wishes and save your questions for me. Thank you.

AMBER VINSON, NURSE, TEXAS HEALTH PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL: Thank you, Dr. Ribner. I'm so grateful to be well. And first and foremost, I want to thank God. I sincerely believe that with God, all things are possible. While the skill and dedication of the doctors, nurses and others who have taken care of me have obviously led to my recovery, it has been God's love that has truly carried my family and me through this difficult time and has played such an important role in giving me hope and the strength to fight.

I also want to take a moment to publicly thank my dear grandparents, my aunt and my uncle who have been visiting me here at Emory, supporting me and making sure I knew my family was there for me throughout my illness. And to my family who played such an important role in my recovery by being there every minute, every day. Even though you couldn't be close, mom and Derek, I want to express my love and sincere thanks.

While this is a day for celebration and gratitude, I ask that we not lose focus on the thousands of families who continue to labor under the burden of this disease in West Africa. Thank you to Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, both of whom were successfully treated here at Emory, for your donations of plasma for me and other patients. And thank you for your leadership in helping to educate the public about this difficult but treatable disease.

I want to sincerely thank the professionals who have contributed to my care here at Emory Health Care and at Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas. As a nurse and now as someone who has experienced what it's like to be cared for through a life-threatening illness, I am so appreciative and grateful for your exceptional skill, warmth and care.

Finally, my family and I would like to thank the many people whose prayers have helped sustain us. As we head back home to Texas, we are grateful and we respectfully ask for the privacy my family and I need at this time. Thank you.

DOLLARD: Thank you, Amber. At this time, we'll open it up for questions. For Dr. Ribner. Yes, sir?

RIBNER: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Dr. Ribner, what have you learned from the treatment of Dr. Brantly to Nancy Writebol to Amber. What -- have you changed your protocol of how you treat, streamlined and things of that nature?

RIBNER: So, the question is, what have we learned from now treating successfully four patients with Ebola Virus Disease in a developed country? And the answer is, we've learned a great deal. Simple things like fluid management, electrolyte management. Again, our colleagues in West Africa and also in central Africa have treated a lot more patients with Ebola Virus Disease than we have but the advantage we have is the infrastructure to really study this disease in great detail. And, again, we have been feeding that back to the -- our colleagues both in West Africa as well as around the United States as many facilities plan for potentially caring for patients with Ebola Virus Disease.

QUESTION: On what -- we've had a lot of (INAUDIBLE.)

RIBNER: The question is, what is the role of quarantine in managing Ebola Virus Disease? We recognize there's a lot of anxiety in the United States. And we think it's critically important, I think it's critically important, that we reassure the American public that we are, in fact, taking measures to protect them from future exposure or infection with Ebola Virus Disease. But I think the thing we really have to keep in mind is that the only way that we are truly going to be able to make our citizens safe is if we control the outbreak in Africa which is having a devastating impact on those countries.

And so, as we put in place various measures to try and protect citizens of this country, we have to be very mindful of any unintended consequences which may make it more difficult to manage patients in the African continent. Every state is going to have to do that very delicate balancing act with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and from professional societies. Emory has membership on the governor's task force attempting to state -- attempting to allow -- assist the state in making that balance for the state of Georgia.

QUESTION: Dr. Ribner, a couple of questions. First, congratulations on triumphing over Ebola four times now. You talked about -- a little bit about what you've learned. But I'm wondering if you can -- you've had patients with various levels of severity. I'm just was wondering if you could say what you've learned (INAUDIBLE) from that? Secondly, Miss Vinson was declared virus-free several days ago. Could you talk about what has been going on since then and why she was not discharged earlier?

RIBNER: OK. So, again, the question is, what have we learned from caring with -- for patients with multiple levels of illness associated with Ebola Virus Disease? And, again, we have learned, as we had anticipated, for those of you who were with us back in early August when we started this adventure together, that, indeed, our hypotheses were correct, that the aggressive supportive care that we have learned from treating many critically ill patients at Emory University Hospital is directly applicable to patients with Ebola virus disease.

The other thing that we have really changed the mindset on is how aggressive we can be with patients with Ebola virus disease. I would have to tell you that the general dogma in our industry in July was that if patients got so ill that they required dialysis or ventilator support, there was no purpose in doing those interventions because they would invariably die. I think we have shown our colleagues in the U.S. and elsewhere that that is certainly not the case. And therefore I think we have changed the algorithm for how aggressive we are going to be willing to be in caring for patients with Ebola virus disease.

The second part of the question in terms of Ms. Vinson's health care over the last week, I obviously cannot release because of patient confidentiality issues.

QUESTION: Have you been able, in the course of your debriefing (ph) or treatment, to identify how she became exposed in the first place?

RIBNER: We are not aware of the specific details of what occurred in the Dallas facility, or how transmission occurred in that environment.

QUESTION: Can you attribute her relative speedy recovery to any one or two techniques that you used, because her recovery has been much faster than some of the previous patients?

RIBNER: So the question is, why did our patient recover so quickly? And a parallel question, which you probably all have noticed, is that her colleague also recovered very quickly. The honest answer is, we're not exactly sure. We have a couple of hypotheses. Number one, they are two of the youngest patients who have been treated in developed countries for Ebola virus disease. And, again, we know from a lot of data coming out of Africa that younger patients do much better than patients who are older.

The other hypothesis we have is, again, that she was wearing personal protective equipment during the care of her patient in Dallas and therefore it is quite likely that the amount of virus that she was exposed to was substantially less than what we see in patients who get infected in less-developed countries. And we also know that the higher the viral load that you get infected with, the more severe your disease is likely to be.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to take a couple of questions from the call-in line right now. Can we - can we get those questions now?

QUESTION: Yes, here. (INAUDIBLE) thank you for your time. I would just like to commend the response from Emory. Overall, what did the methods that you would like to get over to the public about some of the fear that really gripped us?

RIBNER: So the question for those of you who may not have heard it is, what message would we like to get out to the public in terms of the anxiety and fear which is very present in the United States?

And I think the message we would like to get across is that, again, this is a new virus for the American shores. This is a virus, however, which is well-known, unfortunately, in Africa, where they have had 40 years of experience in dealing with it. We know the modes of transmission. This is not a virus which is very easy to acquire through casual contact or through the air. It requires exposure to blood and body fluids and close exposure.

And, again, as we look at measures in the United States to potentially control additional exposures that might occur, we need to keep the science in mind as we deal with other measures.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, so there he is, Dr. Bruce Ribner of Emory University Hospital answering reporters' questions. A very happy day over there in Atlanta, Georgia. The Ebola survivor, Amber Vinson, a nurse from Dallas, Texas, she is now, you see, out of the hospital. She was smiling. She gave a very emotional, beautiful statement with members of her family, including her grandparents, there. Dr. Ribner surrounded by other physicians. Lots of nurses, fellow nurses, who were extremely happy at this relatively speedy recovery. There she is, Amber Vinson.

Our own chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, is on the phone.

Sanjay, you know Emory University Hospital well. I assume you know Dr. Ribner well as well. What I learned -- he seemed to be indicating, Sanjay, a new detail for me, I don't know if it's new for you, that aggressive treatment, including dialysis, ventilation, lung ventilation, if you will, that that could really make a huge difference in these patients. DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): A

very important point, Wolf. And I picked up on that same thing.

And you'll remember, Wolf, not that long ago, Dr. Frieden sort of raised the concern that should patients who are sick with Ebola have some of these aggressive procedures done at all? He was sort of wondering aloud, a, would they work, and, b, might they put the health care providers who performed these procedures at too high a risk of being infected?

And Dr. Ribner, again, Wolf, I heard the same thing you did, he sort of said not only does it seem to work but obviously they have not had any issues with what are known as secondary infections, with health care providers getting infected. So I think a very important -- obviously they don't have a lot of those resources in central and west Africa. And when you hear the mortality rates being seven out of 10 or even up to nine out of 10, that could be one of the big differences as to why mortality is so much lower here in the United States. Eight out of nine patients now, Wolf, treated in the United States, eight out of nine have now survived.

BLITZER: And they all survived at the three main facilities we're talking about, Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland, the National Institutes of Health, as well as in Nebraska at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. There is a patient, Sanjay, at Bellevue Hospital in New York right now, Dr. Craig Spencer. A lot of people have asked me the question, why not move him from Bellevue to one of these three other facilities?

GUPTA: Well, you know, and I think when you - when you ask that question to Dr. Fauci or even to Dr. Ribner at Emory, the answer comes back - and I've talked to them at length about this, that it really shouldn't make a big difference.

Now, Dallas notwithstanding -- and I think obviously there were a lot of lessons learned in Dallas. But Dallas notwithstanding, really any big hospital that has the ability to isolate a patient, which most big hospitals can, should be able to also take care of a patient with Ebola. It does require an isolation area. It does require an inordinate amount of manpower, of nurses and doctors to help take care of the patients. But if you have those things, you should be able to do it. There's no magic wand or magic potion that the Emory, Nebraska or NIH hospitals offer. That's not - that's not it. It's more a question of the training and being able to implement what is already well-known.

BLITZER: We're seeing a very nice, lovely picture, Amber Vinson, the Dallas nurse, cured of Ebola. She is giving all of those fellow nurses, physicians, a big hug. They're clearly not afraid to give her a hug after she suffered from Ebola. You can see how happy all of them are.

I want to bring in Seema.

Very quickly, Seema, I want to continue this conversation with you after the break, but should any of these nurses or doctors be concerned about hugging this former Ebola patient?

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, STAFF WRITER, DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Absolutely not. They are doing the right thing by embracing her, hugging her and welcoming her back now that she's recovered. She's had more than one test that's been negative for Ebola. And it's really important, Wolf, that we do not let fear get in the way of empathy and compassion. She's a brave young woman who's fought the virus. She should not now have to fight any stigma.

BLITZER: It's a -- it was a nice scene the other day when Nina Pham, the other Dallas nurse who was released from the NIH, the National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, right outside of Washington, D.C., she was invited over to see President Obama at the White House. She gave him -- he gave her a big hug as well. There she is, Amber Vinson, the 29-year-old nurse from Dallas, Texas, being escorted by Emory University physicians, giving her a nice round of applause. A very courageous, wonderful woman who, unfortunately, contracted Ebola from Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who unfortunately died in Dallas, Texas. But she and Nina Pham, the two nurses who dealt with him, contracted Ebola, they are now Ebola-free.

Let's take a quick break. Much more of the special coverage we're doing right now right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The ordeal of a five-year-old little boy being tested for Ebola is almost over. He was being checked at a New York City hospital after returning from West Africa. Poppy Harlow is over at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. She's standing by, as is Dr. Seema Yasmin, and she's in Dallas watching what's going on.

I want to get to that little boy in a moment, Poppy. Stand by.

But, Seema, let's talk a little bit about what we just saw, a very emotional, heart-warming development. The Dallas nurse, Amber Vinson, released from Emory University Hospital. She's Ebola-free. The other day Nina Pham, the other Dallas nurse, released from NIH hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, Ebola-free. These are real success stories, aren't they?

YASMIN: They absolutely are. And it's the kind of good news we've been just waiting for, Wolf, with the tragic story that's still unfolding in West Africa. And we heard Dr. Ribner at Emory say that one of the reasons why Nurse Amber Vinson and also Nurse Nina Pham may have recovered so quickly is because they're young and they're healthy to begin with. So we're learning that's a trend that perhaps people who are older or who already have other illnesses may not beat Ebola as quickly as these two young women.

BLITZER: And when he says that what was critical was what he called fluid management and electrolyte management, explain what that means.

YASMIN: So electrolytes are things like sodium, potassium, magnesium, really important for us to have a good balance of those and Ebola really messes that up, Wolf, because there's such severe diarrhea and vomiting. The electrolyte balance in our bodies just goes haywire. And so Dr. Ribner has learned from really carefully managing these four patients at Emory that making sure those levels of things like sodium and potassium, making sure they stay really good and well-balanced is important.

BLITZER: And were you surprised he strongly defended some extreme measures like dialysis for example, even in someone who is very, very ill. And we know that Thomas Eric Duncan, he was going through dialysis. It didn't help him.

YASMIN: That wasn't surprising because, you know, health care workers, they want to provide the best level of care that they can. If they see that a patient is struggling with breathing, they want to put them on a ventilator. If they see that a person's kidney function isn't very good, they want to put them on dialysis. So that wasn't surprising. And we've learnt that that can be really important in patients with Ebola to give them that kind of supportive medical care.

BLITZER: Even when they're very, very ill.