CDC releasing new HCW guidelines today

New guidelines for the treatment of Ebola expected to be issued Monday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will require healthcare workers to be completely covered up when treating patients for the virus, and be monitored while donning and removing protective garb.

The new, more stringent guidelines have been developed as a response to two nurses at a Dallas hospital becoming infected with Ebola after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who became the first person in the United States to die of the virus Oct. 8. 

"So there were parts about that protocol that left vulnerability, parts of the skin that were open," Fauci said Sunday.

Health officials had previously allowed hospitals some flexibility to use available covering when dealing with suspected Ebola patients. The new guidelines are expected to set firmer standards: calling for full-body suits and hoods that protect worker's necks; setting rigorous rules for removal of equipment and disinfection of hands; and requiring a "site manager" to supervise the putting on and taking off of equipment.

The guidelines also are expected to require a "buddy system" in which workers check each other as they come in and go out, an official who was familiar with the guidelines but not authorized to discuss them before their release told the Associated Press.

Hospital workers also will be expected to exhaustively practice getting in and out of the equipment, the official said.

Nurses have been clamoring for more guidance and better garb, saying they have never cared for Ebola patients before and feel unprepared and underequipped.

"If hospital administrators had to take care of Ebola patients, they would have the gold standard and hazmat suits," said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, a union with 185,000 members.

In some places where they have the suits, nurses have not practiced taking them on and off.

"The hospital is sending them essentially a link to the CDC website. That's not preparation. That's like a do-it-yourself manual," DeMoro said.

Fauci also said Sunday that more hospitals will need to train and equip their staffs to deal with patients with Ebola. Currently only four hospitals have been designated to handle Ebola cases by the U.S.: Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula, Mont., and Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha. The NIH and Emory are currently treating Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, the two infected Dallas nurses. 

"We need to have more than just the four [hospitals] in which you have people who are pre-trained, so that you don’t come in, and then that’s the first time you start thinking about it," Fauci told NBC's "Meet The Press." "It can’t just be four. We may not even need any more, and we hope we don’t."