San Francisco officials say Ebola response tested systems; monitoring of travelers continues

Naveena Bhabha, director of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness Branch, and Dr. Cora Hoover, director of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention, told commissioners that San Francisco activated its Department Operations Center (DOC) during the Ebola response and staffed more than 100 personnel for planning and operations.

Bhabha summarized systemwide work: implementing CDC- and HHS-aligned capability frameworks, standing up monitoring protocols for returning travelers, coordinating with airports and transit agencies, updating isolation and quarantine procedures, and addressing medical-waste contracts to ensure safe handling if a case arrived in the city. "We activated our entire DOC to plan for the response," Bhabha said, emphasizing that the activation tested processes the city will use for other emergencies.

Dr. Hoover said communicable-disease staff have monitored dozens of travelers (83 at the time of the slides) arriving from Ebola-affected countries with a 21-day monitoring protocol handled by public-health nurses. "The goal of monitoring is to make sure that if someone develops symptoms we can provide evaluation in a controlled and safe way," Hoover said, noting that no Ebola cases were diagnosed in California counties to date.

Commissioners asked about the transition from frequent incident calls back to routine operations. Staff explained that as capacity stabilized the hospital/hospital-preparedness calls moved from weekly to monthly and the monitoring work was integrated into regular communicable-disease unit responsibilities; the DOC remains ready to reactivate if needs outstrip routine resources.

Commissioners thanked staff for preparedness work and for the focus on partner coordination and training, including practical PPE training and hospital assessments. The presentation concluded with a commitment to continue monthly coordination calls and to maintain readiness.