"the listening post." notes >> isil fighters retake territory in anbar problems in advance of the main supply route to the capital. . >> i am david foster. you are watching al jazeera. in the next 30 minutes, mohegan sun of brazilians vote for their next president. dilma roussef trying to get a second term in. 20 bodies found in southern mexico close to where 43 students went missing last week. seuol sees the light at the south korea ian capitol rids itself of overpass eyesores.

the islamic state of iraq and the lavant it also known as isil says it has taken over more territory in the northern amba prongs already wants to establish an islamic state in the region. but strategic battle grounds not far from the iraq capitol are proving difficult for either it or the government to hold on to. reports suggest isil has retaken parts after it was won by iraqi forces on saturday west of baghdad, airstrikes have helped put us isil fighters back to the town of kabisa bimran khan reports on howhy hold that towns so important for the iraqi army. >> furious exchange of fire shows isil isn't slowing down.

backed by tanks andhe weapons, these government force in the town. this is a strategic town linking agebar with baghdad in the south. . >> good afternoon to you. welcome to al jazeera america. i am morgan radford life in new york city. the 70sers for disease control and prevention is holding a news conference right now to discuss the latest ebola situation. so let's take a look. >> what has happened and where we are going to be going. the patience was diagnosed on tuesday. within about two hours, we announced that. >> ening, we had staff on the ground helping the terrific staff in dallas and texas to respond to this case and we have no doubt that we will stop it in its tracks in texas. it's worth stepping back and saying how ebola spread. he bowl a only spreads by direct contact with someone who is sick or with their body fluid. so the core of control is

identifying everyone who might have had contact with them and making sure their monitored for 21 days and if they develop symptoms, immediately isolating them to break the chain of transmission. there is no doubt that we can stop ebola in this country. today i would like to spend a minute talking about what's happening in dallas and then turn to my colleagues there. then, about what's happening in the u.s. more broadly and finally, where we are with the epidemic in west africa. in terms of dallas, the work there by the staff of the local and state health departments with cdc assistance has been terrific. they have been able to assess all 114 individuals who might possibly have had contact of those, they were able to rule out 66 did not have contact they identified 10 who appeared to have had contact with the individual when he might possibly have been infectious.

with 10, 7 are healthcare workers three are family or community contacts. in addition, there are about 38 other people in whom we could not rule out that they had contact. so all of those 48 people will be tracked for 21 days to determine whether they have fever and if any develop fever, they will be immediately isolated, tested and if they have ebola, given appropriate care and determined whether there were any additional contacts to their case. >> is how we have stopped every outbreak of ebola in the world until this one in west africa and that's how we stopped it in lagos, nigeria and that's how well stop it in texas. >> going on to the u.s. situation, we have seen a lot of underable concern because of the deadly nature of ebola and we are really hoping for the

rofrnling of the patient in dallas. we understand that his situation has taken a turn for the worse. we know that ebola is a very serious disease, and we are hoping for his recovery. but because it's such a deadly disease, people are scared. and it's normal to be scared. in fact, for the healthcare workers who are carrying for people with ebola, we want them to be scared. we want them to have a healthy respect of the risk of any lapse in infection control procedure. we want them to channel that fear in to being incredibly meticulous about infection control. many people have pointed out that initially, the individual was not diagnosed. and we have done a lot at cdc and will be doing a lot more in the coming days and weeks to inform and empower not just doctors but nurses, healthcare professionals of all kinds to think about ebola and anyone who has been in guinea, liberia or

sierra leone and has a fever or any other symptoms suggestive of ebola and to make sure that our index of suspicion is such that if that happened, we assess them and if indicates, test for ebola. cdc has already done -- reached hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers with alerts, information, materials, toolses, webnars at least once a week and we will continue to ramp that up, working closely with medical associations with groups of doctors and nurses and others and this basic issue of making sure that at this time, ebola remains top of mind in people who have had a travel history is something that we will continue to focus on. at cdc, we have seen the level of interest increase. in fact, we were getting about 50 calls or e-mails per day before the initial patient was diagnosed here it's up to about 800 calls or e-mails per day.

and we understand the level of concern. we also understand that people would like to do everything possible to keep ebola out of the u.s. and we agree with that within 00%. our top priority at cdc is to protect americans from threats. we work 24/7 to do that. in this case, we are doing that by many different ways. one of them is working to stop the outbreak at its source in africa because as long as cases continues there, there is a possibility that someone will travel, infect someone else, come in to this country or another country and possibly have another case of ebola. as long as the outbreak is continuing in africa, there is a risk in other places. we have long said it. it's worth repeating. an outbreak anywhere is potentially a threat everywhere but that doesn't mean we can't do anything. one of the things we do is to make sure that everyone leaving those countries is screened with their temperature being taken, questions being asked and being

observed to see if they appear to be il. >> screening has in recent months removed 77 people who wou wouldv boarded planes to leave those three currents trees but didn't because of the screening that cdc staff helped those countries implement. i can assure you that the leadership of each of those three countries wants to make sure that screen something as good as it can be because they need the airlines to keep flying. otherwise, they won't be able to keep their societies moving and we won't be able to stop the outbreak there. in addition >> of course, we work with healthcare workers around the countries so there is rapid identification of cases and, of course, we are now looking at the issue of entry screening, and wir looking at all possibilities. there have been suggestions from people in congress, from the public, from the media. we will look at those and see what works to protect americans and to make sure that whatever we do doesn't unintentionally actually increase our risk. if with make it harder to fight the outbreak in west africa, we actually inc. yes, sir our own

risks. so those are the criteria that we are using. working across the u.s. government and many agencies focused on this and will be committed to doing whatever we can to further increase the safety of americans. getting finally, to the issue of what's happening in west africa today, the situation remains very fluid. it's striking. when i speak with the cdc leaders who are there and we have sent now 135 of our top disease detectives and they are working not only at the national level but down to the county and district level in each of the three countries, one of the things that's quite striking is the diversity of the experience. this 70s west africa. this is three individual currents trees. each of the individual countries has its own patterns of disease spread. in some of they will, there are districts that have not had a case of ebola. in some, there are just a handful of cases in some of those districts. so we are moving to looking at each of the 62 districts across these three countries to see

what more can be done to cone down this forest fire, to prevent it from spleding to areas it hasn't spread yet, to put out sparks where it spread to some places and where -- places where it's got a huge problem to isolate as many people as rapidly as possible. we have seen real prog in the response over the past one to two weeks. the department of defense being on the ground has made a big difference. they are already moving out and helping with operations. we have also seen u.s. aid, effectively increase support for families that witness to respectfully and save barely people who died. that's very important because it reduces the spread of ebola. so while we are still not ahead of it, we are certainly getting further along than we were before. i am looking forward to briefing president obama on the situation in west africa tomorrow and to further ensuring that the president's direction that we move rapidly to do as much as we can to stop this is what we are

doing not only at cdc, thought only across the u.s. government but globally because we are seeing a tremendous global coalition committed to doing this. so that's a bit about where we are in the -- in dallas and the u.s. and globally and before i turn it over to my colleagues in texas, just to highlight that one thing that happened that didn't get much notice in this past week because it happened to be on tuesday, the day that we announced the diagnosis is that we published a report on what happened in nigeria. when they had a single case and they didn't do any infection control the they ended up with 19 secondary cases, additional cases, but because of a rapid public health response ofbl effectively tracking nearly 900 contacts, it appears they have been able to stop the outbreak in nigeria. though we can't give the all clear yet, it does look like the outbreak is over there because of good public health action. i am confident that anywhere we apply the fundamental principles of infection control and public

health follow-up, we can stop ebola. >> thank you, dr. frieden. next speaker is dr. david lakey, who is the commissioner of the texas departments of state health services. dr. lakey. >> good afternoon. this is david lakey, the commissioner of health from the state of texas. i want to thank dr. frieden for the support of the cdc as we are working on this overt right now. it's one effort and one team. as i started off, i again want to say that my thoughts and prayers and our thoughts and prayers are with the patient right now and obviously, he's critically ill but also with the family as they are going through this event and the contacts that have been identified that are obviously have concern about what's going on with them right now. and request the hospital workers that athat are caring for this ilpatient right now. as i said earlier, we are doing our work in pirp with the cdc

and our local health department here in the state of texas. a lot of very important hard work is taking place right here in texas and dallas to ensure that the people of dallas are safe the good news is that we have had no more cases and no one has reported any symptoms and we are happy about that and we are reassured and we are still very cautious to make sure we continue to care for individuals mop tofr the sys the way it needs to be done. our focus here is to closely monitor every contact and the possible contacts and to identify all of the -- and we have identified all of the contacts and our priority in public health is to continue tracking those individuals. we want to make sure that we are closely monitoring them, and that's why we are focused on. also, as we are monitoring individuals, as we identify needs that they may have or, we are working through or incident command structure to make sure those issues are addressed, making sure that food issues are identified or if electricity was

turned off during the storm that those issues are resolved. we also, you know, the neighbors have had concerns. we have pride tried to provide health educators to help address those issues. our focus is to make sure that you are informed of what's going on and understand how the public health system works and what the risk may be. the public health system works to present and contain these risks and i know it's been noted several times that obviously a lot of people are listening right now. i want to reemphasize that ebola is not spread by the air. people are not contagious unless they have symptoms. this can't be stated enough. i think it needs to be reassuring to the individuals that are listening today. there are hospitals across the state of texas and across the nation that are on the lookout for any additional cases and that's what we want. we want the hospitals to be on high alert and to identify individuals that have a travel

history to the areas that are affected and to come in with any symptoms that could could be consistent with ebola. so, so that these individuals can be identified quickly and that healthcare workers can be protected. we are going to -- they are going to call on us and that's exactly the way we want the system to work, so that when they are identified as a concern, that they can get the testing that needs to be done. so we are all on high eye letter right now that's where we believe it should be. we continue to plan for contigencies. a lot of work is taking place to make sure that whatever happens that we are as prepared as we need to be to address those issues. so again, dr. frieden action i want to thank you for the partnership between the cdc and the state of texas and dallas city and county as we work together to ensure the safety of the people in dallas. thank you. >> thank you, dr. laky. our final speaker is dallas county judge, clay lewis jenkins. judge jenkins?

>> good morning, and happy sunday to everyone on the call. i want to start off by thanking all of the people who are currently being monitored and their families. i realize that when you are being monitored, en with a low risk for ebola, it is a very unsettling and frankly, terrifying process to worry about. and i am praying for all of you and many others are as well. this morning, i had the opportunity to participate in half of a mass, and it was a mass by the bishop of the archdiocese of dallas for the catholic church where 1.2 million catholics are under his leadership, and the sermon was on ebola.

and remaining calm and showing compassion and our duties to our fellow man. i know that is a message that is being preached throughout synagogues, chufrnlingz and mosques in the dallas county area and so i want to thank the faith community for stepping up for the faith leader who found the home fluis and the young me and for all of the faith leaders who have stepped up as you always do in times of crisis. i want the public to remember we had the same sort of concerns and some people have the same types of panic when we had the west nile virus outbreak in 2012. i am speaking to you from our eoc here in dallas county sitting directly next to me is david lakey, of the state of texas, our state public health commissioner and highest

authority on the public health and dave dagel from the cdc. these are the two men that embedded in dallas county in my offices and were at my side when we stopped the west nile virus outbreak in 2012 and we will contain this ebola situation as well. we are work -- as the news reports have come out, i will answer the first question ahead of time. we are working to find a low-risk individual who has been identified as a contact. we have our dallas county sheriff's department and dallas president police department teams on the ground now. and they have been there since last night. we are working to locate the individual and get him to a comfortable, compassionate place where we can monitor him and

care for his every need during the full monitoring period. i want to stress to you this person is not committed -- has not committed a crime. they are a low-risk individual, and i emphasize low-risk individual and we are doing this as a precautionary measure. again, i want to thank everyone. the staff of homeland security and emergency management and dallas county health and human services epi team as well as my executive staff for all of the their hours and hours of work on very little sleep. oh, and the individual was seen yesterday. the low risk individual i just spoke of was seen yesterday, was monitored and is an asymptomatic, low-expose arew

individual so remember what we talked about for those of you who are not medical reporters, asymptomatic people have zero -- you have zero chance of contracting the ebola virus from an asymptomatic individual. we just need to locate this individual, and we could use your help in letting them know they are not in trouble. we want to move them to a comfortable and compassionate place and care for their every need while we monitor them throughout the monitoring period. and with that, i will turn it over for questions. >> thank you, judge jenkins. we will now open the room for questions and by phone through the operator. thank you. ? >> again, for parties on the phone, if you would like to does a question, star win and record your name when prompted. >> in the. >> doctor can you talk about this patient in dallas soon to

take a turn for the worst? are they getting the same treatment. >> we just heard tom frieden talk about the situation for thomas duncan and he said it has quote taken a turn for the worse. he also says he wants the healthcare workers to be scared because hechty fear is crucial to remaining metic lus in care and prevention. he also said however that our focus should be on stopping this happening in africa because outbreak anywhere is a threat everywhere. let's bring in al jazeera's diane esterbrook live for nus dallas this after be and joins us with the latest on the situation on the ground. diane, can you give us an update on thomas duncan's condition? >> we don't know a whole lot about his condition at this time. we do know he is in critical condition. his condition was downgraded yesterday from sirius to critical. we do have calls into the hospital. they tell us they may have an update for us this afternoon.

at this point, we don't have anything more to say than he is in fact in critical condition and they are watching him closely. >> which is interesting because we heard from clay due is jenkins, the dallas county judge and he said the dallas patient is low -- a low risk individual and has not committed a crime. he also went on to thank the faith based community, specifically today on sunday. so, it's certainly a difficult time for the dallas communitiesty there. what are you hearing from those residence? >> did is a difficult time. i will tell you there are a lot of concerns here on the ground. we are actually right now at a church in a liberian community. there are a lot of concerns here these folks have relatives over in liberia. some looking looking actually to be aheeducated on what is going.

so we hope to talk to more of them later. we did visit some clinics yesterday, some walk-in clinics. some of the healthcare providers we talked to say they are coming in, asking a lot of questions. keep in mind, we are just at the beginning of the flu season. and some of those symptoms common with the flu are common with ebola. they are trying to give people reainsurance. anthony fouchey, an infectious disease expert said earlier today he wouldn't be surprised if we see another case of ebola here in dallas. here is what he had to say. >> do you guys have the sound from the dallas to hear what he had to say in the control room? do we have that sound? >> it's great that we have an index of suspicion such that we evaluate everyone person who has traveled and who might have t that's what we expect to see. it's actually a good thing to see more concerns so that we

don't miss a patient and allow it to spread in a cluster in this country. what flu season will hold, i don't know. it's a good thing to get a flu shot. it will be here. we can't predict what it will be like. >> that was diane ester brook joining us live on the ground in dallas. stay tuned with ashlthsz with the latest on the ebola outbreak and more from thomas freedon. follow us orlando at aljazeera.com or at twitter. stay with us just after this break.

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