FARGO, N.D. — California health officials have given note that North Dakota is one of six countries that may get Ebola medical waste in case the state has any material to incinerate.
In a note posted last week, the California Department of Public Health listed North Dakota as one of six countries in which California pushes medical waste to be incinerated when onsite disposal isn’t available at medical centers.
Healthcare Environmental Services Inc., located at an industrial park at 1420 40th St. N. at Fargo, operates a medical waste incinerator that also prevents waste from other locations.
Calls to Healthcare Environmental Services on Tuesday afternoon were not returned.
The company is owned by Sanford Health. A Sanford spokeswoman said it couldn’t immediately comment on the possible incineration of Ebola waste from California at the Fargo centre.
up to now, California has no known Ebola cases, according to the state health division, which spelled out its own interim guidelines for safe handling of medical waste in an alert to providers and others.
In a different development, public health officials have been tracking two North Dakota residents who recently returned from countries in West Africa that are combating the Ebola epidemic.
Neither of those two residents is running a fever or showing any symptoms of an Ebola disease, which may include diarrhea, muscle and joint aches and abnormal bleeding. “They pose no danger to the community”
Health officials are not releasing information about where the two people live.
Public health officials in Minnesota and South Dakota also are monitoring residents in those countries who have recently visited Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone in West Africa, in which an outbreak of Ebola has killed about 5,000.
State health officials have been contacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when a person is entering the United States from those nations through five major international airports.
“We’re doing tracking,” explained Sam Brungardt, a public information officer for the Minnesota Health Department.
On Monday, Minnesota health officials announced that they were tracking one resident who’d traveled to West Africa, but the list of individuals to track is growing.
“It has grown, and it’ll continue to grow because we get reports by the CDC,” Brungardt said. “There’s people that are returning from these three West African nations every day.”
up to now, not one of those being monitored for signs of fever with twice-daily temperature checks show any indication of disease, he said.
As a precaution, howeverthey will continue to be checked during the 21-day observation period, generally thought of as the incubation period for the Ebola virus.
South Dakota health officials also are tracking somebody who recently returned from West Africa, but isn’t showing symptoms.
South Dakota health officials also are monitoring someone who recently returned from West Africa, but is not showing symptoms.