Liberian officials say they will prosecute Thomas Eric Duncan, the man who was diagnosed in Dallas with Ebola, for lying on a health questionnaire before boarding a flight to the U.S., The Associated Press reports.
Binyah Kesselly, chairman of the board of directors of the Liberia Airport Authority, said Duncan had answered "no" to a question asking whether he had cared for an Ebola patient or touched the body of anyone who had died in an Ebola-affected area.
"We expect people to do the honorable thing," Kesselly said, according to the AP.
As we wrote on Wednesday, Duncan's neighbors in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, believe he was infected while helping a pregnant woman with Ebola to a hospital.
He arrived in Dallas on Sept. 20 and showed up at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital days later with nondescript symptoms. There a nurse, who was reportedly following an Ebola checklist, asked Duncan if he'd traveled to or from West Africa. Duncan answered that he had, but that information was not relayed to doctors, so "the full import of that information wasn't factored into the clinical decision-making," Dr. Mark Lester, a hospital official said Wednesday.
The man was admitted to the same hospital earlier this week, where he was diagnosed with Ebola and placed in isolation.
On Thursday, Texas health officials said about 100 "potential contacts" linked to Duncan were being monitored for symptoms of the disease.
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