In yet another indication of the rapidly rising anxiety over Ebola, a new scare erupted at the Pentagon on Friday morning after a woman on a tour bus in the building’s parking lot who said she had recently traveled from Africa vomited, defense officials said.
At about 9 a.m., Pentagon police officers identified a woman in the Pentagon South Parking Lot who was ill and vomiting. Local Arlington County Fire Department personnel responded immediately. During the response, the woman indicated that she had recently visited Africa, defense officials said.
Pentagon officials shut down traffic in the area, closed the building entrance to Corridor 2 and restricted access to the parking lot nearby, said Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Defense Department spokesman.
A hazardous materials response team was called out of “a complete abundance of caution,” Pentagon Force Protection Agency spokesman Chris Layman told the news website ARLnow.com.
Defense officials said Friday the woman had been on a bus shuttling guests to the passage of command ceremony for the Marine Corps commandant at the Marine Barracks, 8th and I Streets in Washington, D.C.
The woman was taken to Inova Fairfax Hospital, Crosson said, while the guests proceeded to the ceremony. But when they arrived, they were not allowed to debark and Marine Corps protocol officers told them to stay on the bus.
They remained there until 11:30, when they were transferred to another bus and given water, hand sanitizer, trash bags and granola bars, according to Jef Akst, a staff writer for The Scientist magazine, whose parents, George and Barbara Akst, were communicating with her via text from the vehicle.
Shortly after 1:30, the passengers were released.
“My parents are being taken home in a van,” Akst said in a telephone interview with Military Times. “Before they were released, they were told they should take their temperatures twice a day and notify their public health departments if they develop symptoms.”
She said her parents did not seem worried about the event and added that her publication has been following the Ebola epidemic closely. “We have been paying attention to the events here in the United States. It’s just weird to be on the other end of an interview about it,” she said.
Defense officials declined to respond to hypothetical questions about the Pentagon’s response plan in the event that a person suspected of having Ebola does enter the building.
Inova released a statement Friday saying the woman is being evaluated for Ebola and has been isolated. According to the facility, she is “undergoing triage in consultation with the Fairfax County Health Department.”
“Based on that evaluation, a decision will be made by the health department as to whether the patient meets the criteria to be tested,” the statement read.
Late Friday afternoon, Associated Press reporter Lolita C. Baldor tweeted that an executive with Total Spectrum, the employer of the sick woman on Pentagon shuttle bus, said the woman has not been out of the U.S. recently.
