WASHINGTON — “I told you so,” Montgomery County Council President Craig Rice said with a smile.
He was talking to reporters about the successful treatment of Dallas nurse Nina Pham, who was treated for Ebola at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. Rice was specifically referring to his position that patients with Ebola would be best handled by one of the four specialized units in the United States designed to handle such diseases.
Rice and several other Montgomery County Council members had commented during a recent briefing with health officials that instead of trying to get every hospital and health care provider to tackle the complex set of protocols still being developed, the best idea would be to get patients to health facilities already able to handle suspected and confirmed cases of Ebola. “We were very passionate about the fact that we felt NIH was the facility that was properly prepared to take care of a patient.”
Rice made his comments Monday, the same day that Governor Martin O’Malley laid out his administration’s plan to deal with travelers returning from West Africa. Rice said he didn’t believe the mandatory quarantining of travelers – the tactic governors in New York and New Jersey had taken – was a good idea. Instead, Rice said, the plan to monitor travelers and then quarantine them on an as-needed basis struck the right balance.
WTOP’s Kate Ryan contributed to this report. Follow @WTOP on Twitter and WTOP on Facebook.
