Hospital Where Ebola Patient Died Keeps Changing Story: He Was Sent Home With 103 Degree Temperature — Hospital Claimed It Was Lower, Made 'Major Errors'

The hospital had earlier claimed that he temperature was just 100.1 F.

Thomas Eric Duncan (right). 2011 photo provided by Wilmot Chayee.

By Clarissa-Jan Lim
In a serious display of negligence at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, Thomas Eric Duncan was released with a 103-degree fever during his initial visit to the emergency room, and his temperature flagged with an exclamation point on the hospital’s record-keeping system. Duncan’s family, outraged that he had not been admitted on his first visit to the ER, provided the Associated Press with his medical records — over 1,400 pages of it.

The records document the first Ebola-diagnosed case in the U.S., from Duncan’s first visit to the ER to his return two days later to his condition as it rapidly deteriorated, culminating in his death on Oct. 8.

Duncan also told a nurse of his recent trip to Africa and had displayed other symptoms that could indicate Ebola, according to the AP report, but after a succession of tests he was sent home.

They had also questioned the decision to keep Duncan in the Dallas hospital, instead of sending him to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where now-survivors Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, the first two Americans who were diagnosed with the disease in West Africa, received treatment.


Emory University Hospital is more well equipped and prepared than Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital to deal with the virus. With Dr. Brantly and Writebol, Emory University Hospital were expecting Ebola patients, a crucial factor when dealing with a disease so unfamiliar in the U.S.

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