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@THISHOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA

Health Authorities Tracking Down Possible Ebola-Exposed; Answering Questions About Ebola; Four Close to Duncan Quarantined in Dallas

Aired October 2, 2014 - 11:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: @THISHOUR health officials casting a wide net in an effort to track down everyone who might have been exposed to Ebola in the United States now that it's been diagnosed for the first time ever here. We're learning authorities are reached out to as many as 100 people, 100 in the Dallas area who may have been in contact with the Ebola-stricken patient.

Video just in to CNN shows janitors wearing the hazmat suits cleaning Lowe Elementary School in Dallas last night, one of the four schools attended by five students, kids who may have had contact with the Ebola patient, Thomas Eric Duncan. Duncan remains in serious but stable condition in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital right now in Dallas.

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: That's the same hospital that turned him away last week saying his symptoms, quote, "did not warrant admission." We now know that Duncan was indeed contagious at that time. Family members with whom he was staying, they have now been ordered to stay home and not to let any visitors in the home.

Certainly, a lot of questions lingering about Ebola. We've asked you to share your questions with us on social media. You've been using #EbolaQandA.

BERMAN: Joining us from the CDC in Atlanta, chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, let me ask you the first question here. Is it possible that Ebola can live on seats, interior door handles, taxis? Can Ebola be on stuff that comes in contact with people who have it?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, this seems like one of the most common questions. I think the best way to sort of answer this is it can live outside the body, first of all, and it can live on surfaces, talking about the Ebola virus, I've heard even up to a few days. Sunlight, obviously cleaning the surface, that will help defeat the virus.

I think people are really trying to figure out, can I subsequently get it? If I go touch that same surface, can I get it? The answer is theoretically, yes. We've talked to several experts in this area, scientists who study this virus and they say the virus does change it a little bit being out of the body, on a surface, so it's less likely to infect. Theoretically, you could get an infection that way, but very, very low likelihood. The way it most typically is transmitted is direct bodily fluid contact.

PEREIRA: All right. Let's pull up another question from Twitter. There's one here, somebody concerned about the ability for our pets to get Ebola and then pass it on. Is that even a concern, Sanjay?

GUPTA: Not in the case of dogs, for example. I have dogs. A lot of people ask this question. Dogs, we know, can actually have the virus in their bodies but they don't get sick from it. First of all, unlike humans, can get sick from it. They also don't seem to be able to infect, pass the virus along and cause an infection. So while the -- if the Ebola virus is in an area like we know in certain areas of West Africa, he was found in dogs in those areas as well, but they weren't passing the infection along.

BERMAN: Let's stay in the animal kingdom. Can you get Ebola from a mosquito? We know they transmit so many contagious diseases?

GUPTA: Thankfully, not this one. It's a very important question. As you might imagine, some of these places in West Africa, if this were a mosquito-borne illness, the numbers of people who would have Ebola would be exponentially higher. We're, talking malaria, for example, those types of numbers. Obviously mosquitoes do take blood. You think, why not then, if a mosquito takes blood, why wouldn't they transmit it? It's as if their bodies, they're not keeping the virus in the same form. The virus may change, become completely inactivated. We don't know. But we can say mosquitoes don't carry Ebola.

PEREIRA: A question about the disposal of waste. We know hospitals have companies that take their medical waste. This person, Angela, is wondering specifically about a company that would agree to do this. I'm assuming the risk of coming into contact with that medical waste.

GUPTA: You know, it's interesting, we were talking about this a little bit when the patients were at Emory University, the first two patients, Dr. Brantly and Dr. Writebo. They have standards and procedures when it comes to medical waste in hospitals, and for isolation units. Typically, what happens is much of the waste is put into these bio containment bags and subsequently incinerated, set on fire. That's the most common way they handle a lot of this waste. Certain parts of the hospital will be handled differently than others. Isolation is considered with a much stronger level of consideration. They burn that stuff.

BERMAN: Important questions, Sanjay. More important to get the answers from you. We appreciate you being with us, standing outside the CDC where you've been so much the last few days. Thanks for that.

PEREIRA: Ahead, our colleague Anderson Cooper had the opportunity to speak to someone who has been very close to this Ebola patient in Dallas. He's going to join us, let us know what he has heard, what he knows. That will happen after a short break. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: We have breaking news right now on the Ebola front. We know Thomas Duncan is a patient right now with Ebola in serious conditions. Authorities trying to piece together everyone he may have come in contact with over the last several days.

Our Anderson Cooper has had a chance to speak with someone incredibly close to this person.

PEREIRA: Anderson is here now and Dr. Sanjay Gupta is listening in.

Clearly a lot of questions.

You had a chance to speak to this woman, girlfriend --

(CROSSTALK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, A.C. 360: Yes. Louise is her first name. And she asked us not to use her full name. She is under quarantine. Thomas Duncan was staying at her apartment, at her place in Dallas. She's had a relationship with Thomas Duncan. I'm not clear of the status of it. One of her kids is from Thomas Duncan, and she's under quarantine. One of her children is in the hospital with her, as well as two nephews, who are in their 20s, because those three young people all were in the hospital, in the apartment at the same time that Thomas Duncan was there and started showing signs of being sick. She said -- Louise brought Duncan to the hospital the first time around.

PEREIRA: When he was turned away.

COOPER: When he was turned away, yeah. Given some antibiotics, given some Excedrin, told -- she says she mentioned twice that he had come from Liberia. Didn't seem to raise any red flags for anybody there. He was sent back to her place. Within two days or so, he started having very -- actually on the antibiotics, he started having a lot of diarrhea, making a lot of trips to the bathroom. He was not vomiting according to Louise. But he was sweating a lot during the night in her bed. The sheets are still on the bed, she told me.

PEREIRA: In the apartment where she called from.

COOPER: Yeah, in the apartment. She said the sheets he sweated on are still on the bed, the pillows are still on the bed. The towels he used she put into plastic bags. They're still in the apartment. She's not clear what to do with them.

The CDC has visited her apartment, told her not to go outside. She is quarantined. She has to stay inside for 21 days. She's taking her own temperature every hour, taking the temperature of the young people who are in the apartment with her.

But she's clearly very concerned. She has very strong faith. She's praying a lot. She has talked to Thomas Duncan on the telephone. She said he is doing the best he can, that he's holding up, but obviously is not feeling well. But she says she has no symptoms at this point. She is just hoping, praying that she's able to get through this.

I was surprised to learn that the sheets are still on the bed and that the CDC has not taken --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: -- or local health officials haven't taken away.

BERMAN: That's a lot of brand new information we're getting.

I want to bring in Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, you just heard Anderson describe the situation inside the quarantine with some details that to me sound a little bit alarming. I wonder if you have any questions about this?

GUPTA: Yeah, just the last thing Anderson mentioned there with the sheets still being on the bed, that obviously is a concern. We've talked about the fact that this virus can live outside the body, can live on surfaces. It's unlikely for it to be transmitted to someone else that way. I tell you, the patients over here at Emory just down the street, they would take the waste out of a patient's room every day, put them in bio containment bags and would subsequently be incinerated. You get the idea of the sort of effectiveness they wanted in terms of the virus.

(CROSSTALK)

GUPTA: It sound like nothing, Anderson, in terms of getting rid of things in the apartment were being done here?

COOPER: She's not clear what she's supposed to do with this. She seems to think she should wait for the CDC to tell her what to do. She said she put the towels he used into a plastic bag. They're still in the apartment, but that the sheets and the pillows are still on the bed. She said she did get some bleach that her daughter brought some bleach, so they have had some Clorox, that they have tried to clean up in the apartment.

But she -- very basic things like she doesn't know how she's going to get food into the apartment. She was told she said maybe the Red Cross would come by. She's still waiting for that. Some health officials brought sandwiches last night but she hasn't had anything today. She's certainly kind of at loose ends and is obviously extremely worried.

Again, she does not feel that she came into any contact with any fluids to her knowledge she says he didn't vomit on her. She wasn't cleaning up after him. She said he was very much sort of prideful, would take care of himself, go into the bathroom when he had diarrhea. And also there have been reports of him throwing up outside the apartments. She said she never saw him outside the apartment.

She wants to make sure people in the apartment complex are informed about how you get Ebola. She said there's a lot of misinformation out there. She's concerned about her own kids who aren't even at the house, at the apartment. She has a son who is in college. And she's concerned that people are pointing fingers at him, saying, oh, that's somebody who may have Ebola. None of those kids came into any contact with Thomas Duncan. They didn't see him when he was there. She's very concerned about getting the right information to people about how the disease -- how the virus is spread.

PEREIRA: There's so little, so many questions that still linger. We're trying to piece together all of it. Sanjay has been a real help doing that. And it sound as though she's relying on the CDC to give her information. The Red Cross has somewhat reached out. They're sitting there alone in this apartment with only the television, a phone.

COOPER: Right.

PEREIRA: She reached out to you or we were you able to get in touch?

COOPER: We called her. We were able to reach her. She's very concerned about the media coverage.

PEREIRA: Understandably.

COOPER: People putting up pictures of some of her children. She said the local news had done that. Again, she just wants to get across, she is staying in the apartment. She's been informed she's not allowed to leave the apartment.

PEREIRA: And nobody is allowed in as well.

COOPER: People aren't allowed in. Obviously some health officials have visited. They're being very cause somehow about how they interact with her. She claims he never left the apartment. Although, she says she never saw it. She was away at work.

BERMAN: Sanjay, you heard Anderson say she doesn't think she came into any bodily fluids. If she was the primary caregiver over these four days where we know he was symptomatic, how hard would it be to stay completely separate from things that could be infectious?

GUPTA: It's challenging, John. It's a very good point. Oftentimes, it's family members that become the first people to also get an infection. You hear about this so many times in West Africa. A person gets sick, they stay at home and subsequently the entire family becomes infected. Tragic stories where the entire family gets infected. It's tough. Even a small amount of infected bodily fluid could cause an infection.

If she's watching, I don't want to alarm her. That's exactly why they're doing what they're doing, to monitor her temperature for 21 days. Hopefully, she doesn't develop a temperature in 21 days. If she doesn't, she gets the all-clear sign at that point. The odds are on her side still. Most people are not going to get an infection. But if they do, this is exactly the way that it happens. If I could ask one more thing as well, Anderson. You said something

else. It sounds like several family members but only four are now being asked to be quarantined. That is because they are most likely to have had contact with him or they were there in the apartment when he got sick?

COOPER: She said when Thomas Duncan was staying with her, one of her kids was there, a 13-year-old, and two nephews who are in their 20s. Those are the three still currently in the apartment, still under quarantine. She has a daughter who lives separately from her. Her daughter is the one who actually called the ambulance the second time, which brought Thomas Duncan to the hospital, called for the second hospital visit, the first time he went in an ambulance. It was the daughter who called because when she went to the apartment, she found Thomas Duncan, shivering, very sick. She had gone there to bring him some tea because Louise was at work. So it's not clear to me how much interaction the daughter had with Thomas Duncan. I asked Louise if her daughter is under quarantine as well. She wasn't 100 percent sure. She said she thought so, but didn't know for sure because her daughter is not living with her in the same apartment.

PEREIRA: One of the concerns, too, of course, they're mapping -- when we talk about this contact mapping, if you will, all the people that those contacts came in touch with. Initially, she may have been in and out of the apartment, too.

We don't know if there's a concern about her, the people she came in contact with. Was she going to work in those early days --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Well, Sanjay should be brought into this.

But, Sanjay, I mean, Louise said she's a caregiver. I'm not sure what capacity? But to Michaela's point, she would not have been a risk to anybody because she, even if she had become infected with the virus, until you actually show symptoms, which often takes up to 21 days, you actually cannot spread the virus to anybody else. So it's important that people not, you know, kind of make this worse than it really is if somebody is infected, a, a blood test won't show it until they show symptoms, and the person cannot spread it until they show symptoms, that is correct.

GUPTA: That's absolutely correct. This idea -- I heard the same thing earlier, Michaela. The idea of the contacts of the contacts are now being sort of -- they're being sought after as well, I think that may have been misrepresented. When we talk about the dozens or even up to 100 people, they're still casting a wide net. But the idea is, are these 100 people, people who may have come in contact with Mr. Duncan himself, a direct contact, as opposed to a secondary contact. It's an important point. Where does that end? What about the contacts of the contacts of the contacts?

COOPER: And Louise is very -- wants to really point out about her son who's in college, that he had no contact with Thomas Duncan and, therefore, you know, nobody should be pointing fingers at him. She's concerned about the hysteria that can develop in a case like this.

BERMAN: But, Sanjay, before we are talking about this quarantine, the fact that these four people were or are being quarantined.

You've spoken to one of them.

But, Sanjay, this does seem to shed light on whys this group is being kept like this at this point, because of the level of contact that we now know they did have?

GUPTA: Yep. This is a little bit of a nuance point but I think a really important one, because it just -- it follows up on what Anderson was just saying. You're not going to spread the disease until you are sick, but you don't want to create a scenario where someone is monitored in the morning, temperature taken in the morning and gone all day, but at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning, starts to get sick, starts to get really sick. Doesn't come home until later that evening, but now you have several hours where the person may have been sick and out and about. That's the situation you don't want to have happen because, at that point, they could potentially start transmitting the virus.

So if you're concerned about somebody in this regard, the quarantine is done really to try to keep the general public safe. It's not an exact science. Remember, at the beginning, I don't think they quarantined members of the family initially, but decided to do so.

PEREIRA: It's interesting, we were talking a lot, Sanjay, with you about the preparedness of hospitals and medical personnel across the country, and you had a chance to speak to Louise about that initial visit to the hospital. Did she talk at all about her frustration or about her concern about going to the hospital and not getting kind of the care and attention they were hoping for?

COOPER: You know, the issue -- she didn't think about Ebola at the time, it didn't cross her mind, she didn't raise it. She thought it might be malaria, some of the symptoms. She's been in the United States for a very long time. But he had a fever of about 101, and so that's why she brought him to the hospital. She -- I don't think -- she didn't express concern about the level of care that he was initially given. I mean they gave him antibiotics and they were there for about three and a half hours, four hours. It wasn't until her daughter found him in the apartment several days later, shivering, that he was brought in, and then she went to the hospital. And she says, then she was actually put off by some of the things that a nurse said to her about we're testing him for Ebola, your country has a lot of viruses --

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: Had the travel history come up in the first visit?

COOPER: Louise says she mentioned twice he had come from Liberia, just come from Liberia. That's why he didn't have a Social Security number. And in that context, both -- she said it was both to the person checking them in -- when you first go to the emergency room and someone checks you in. She raised that to the person. Also to a nurse she says as well.

BERMAN: Anderson, you're the only person right now that we believe has spoken to her, and she's the only direct contact we know to Thomas Duncan. Give us a sense of how she's doing and had he's doing right now?

COOPER: This is a woman of strong faith and she talks about that faith, a preacher who -- from the church she attends has called her and you know she hopes that she's -- all she's doing is just praying and taking her temperature and taking the temperature of everybody in that apartment and she says she it continues to talk to Thomas every day.

PEREIRA: We heard reports Thomas had been -- he got sickened from assisting a pregnant woman with Ebola in Liberia.

COOPER: I asked her --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: I asked Louise about that. She said she didn't know anything about that at all, that he had not mentioned anything to her.

I mean, I found it odd, you know, if you have someone visiting from Liberia, and this is a country where Ebola is, you know, has been killing people --

PEREIRA: It would be top of mind mostly.

COOPER: -- you would think you would start to talk about it. Louise says it didn't come up in the discussion. She didn't ask about Ebola. And Thomas Duncan mentioned nothing about assisting somebody. So again, exactly what their conversations were, I'm not sure. That's what she told me. But we'll see.

BERMAN: It is interesting. No sense did he talk about what he had been through at all, forgetting how he felt, the fact that he assisted a woman who died from Ebola days before he came to the United States.

COOPER: Yeah. Again, you know, she says she doesn't know anything about that. She didn't hear anything about that. Whether or not that's the case, doesn't want to talk about it, I'm not clear. You know, they -- she refers to Thomas Duncan sometimes as her husband, sometimes as the father of at least one of her children. They're not legally married but they clearly have some sort of relationship.

PEREIRA: So two to 21 days is the incubation period we understand. We're a day or two or maybe a few days into this. How is she feeling? You mentioned they've had some food, haven't had any today. Is she feeling like there's going to be a plan for them?

COOPER: She said the CDC told her they would be stopping by every day. They haven't come today. She -- you know, she -- she said she's a caretaker so she certainly, you know, seems adept to taking temperatures. She seems aware of what one is supposed to do. For me, the most surprising thing, I guess, the sheets on the bed,

she's not sleeping on that bed anymore. She's been sleeping in the living room. Again, how they're going to dispose of that is clearly something the CDC or local health officials need to do.

BERMAN: Sanjay, is there anything at this point medical officials can do for this woman, for these four people in quarantine right now, other than visit and monitor? I know ZMapp not much of it around, been given to a few people, something like that, if it existed be of assistance?

GUPTA: No. There's no real evidence on the ZMapp being beneficial here. It's given to people who have already been exposed and sick and we don't know evidence that she's been -- she has Ebola virus or she is -- doesn't sound like she's sick, from what Anderson is saying as well. There would be no role here.

I think one of the most important things, and the Department of Health folks in Texas are listening, getting the apartment cleaned up like they would any other patient care area, because it sounds like that apartment was a patient care area for this man, Mr. Duncan, for about four days. So you would want to treat, you know, the waste in there like you treat hospital waste, which again they would bring bio containment bags in. These are double layered bags. Put them in there and then they're taken out. And this is done in a coordinated way and then it's incinerated. And that's -- every state has their own policy on this, but those are some general guidelines. I would imagine that would be one thing they could do for her, if for no other reason, to give her peace of mind on this.

PEREIRA: It's interesting. You talked about the protocol for dealing with waste in a hospital environment. Thankfully, she's a health care worker of some sort and she sounds like she has a reasonable amount of sense about what to do. But even still, she's likely not equipped to handle all this. Was she sounding panicked that way, I'm at a loss of where to go from here.

COOPER: She feels under siege.

PEREIRA: I bet.

COOPER: She's locked in -- not locked, but she is told she can't go outside her apartment. She would face legal consequences if she did. She's been told. You know, there's a lot of unknowns and uncertainty and I think she has a lot of concern about I think she's watching a lot of television, there's not much else she can do. I think she's concerned about people pointing fingers at her other children who have had no contact.

(CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: Are they cared for? Do we know if they're OK? The other children are --

(CROSSTALK) COOPER: They've had no contact with -- she says they've had no contact with Thomas Duncan, no reason anybody should be pointing fingers at them. And wants other people in her complex to be given real information about Ebola.

PEREIRA: Not just panicked.

COOPER: All the things we've been trying to do. Just kind of tell people how they actually -- you know, the difficulty of actually getting it. It's not airborne. She doesn't want people in her apartment complex completely getting concerned, freaking out. She's very concerned about, you know, the -- this kind of -- the rippling effects of all this.

Her work has been contacted by the CDC.

PEREIRA: They're aware.

COOPER: She will continue to be paid, she's told, during this time she's not able to go to work.

BERMAN: The woman is at home right now.

Let me re-set for a second and remind people going on. The first person in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola right now is inside a hospital in Dallas right now. He's in isolation, being watched very closely by medical officials.

We learned today that four people have been quarantined in that Dallas area. Four people who had been close this man right here, Thomas Duncan, are in quarantine right now.

PEREIRA: Yes.

BERMAN: Anderson Cooper has spoken to one of those people in quarantine, a woman who is the partner of this Ebola patient, Thomas Duncan. And Anderson has exclusive details, not just about the Ebola patient, but about this woman and the people in quarantine right now who were very, very close to him during the period where he was symptomatic.

ANDERSON COOPER, ANCHOR, CNN'S "AC 360": That's right. Yes, I just spoke to Louise, who is not legally married to Thomas Duncan but has had a relationship with him. Thomas Duncan was visiting her apartment in Dallas when he became sick. Louise is the person who took Thomas Duncan to the hospital the first time. Says twice that she informed the people at the hospital who was checking Thomas Duncan in, as well as -- or asking for his information, as well as asking for Social Security Number, as well as a nurse that he had come from Liberia. She says that didn't seem to raise red flags for them. She didn't mention Ebola. It wasn't in Louise's mind. Thomas Duncan didn't either. And no one at the hospital asked any questions about it or whether he had come into contact with anybody who had Ebola. He was given antibiotics. He was sent on his way.

He started to have severe diarrhea over the course of several days, started to be shivering a lot, was very cold a lot, you know, was sweating in the sheets at night. Ultimately, Louise was at work. Thomas Duncan's -- Louise's daughter stopped by the apartment to get him -- bring him some tea, found him shivering, called an ambulance. The ambulance took Thomas Duncan to the hospital. And Louise went to the hospital to meet up with him, was told that already he was being isolated, he was being tested for Ebola. She was sent - she was sent home.

Go ahead.

PEREIRA: That's the point I want to know about. She was sent home. So they understand that this patient needs to be isolated. Was there -- did she talk about any of the conversations that were had with her, who has spent the last few days with a very sick person? Did they say, we need to take your temperature, we need to check you out, we need to test you? Do you know what I mean? Was there --

COOPER: Yes, she - she seemed to have some -- feel offended by the way she was treated actually at the hospital that second time. Some of the comments that a nurse made or health care worker made to her about her home country, about Liberia, about what was happening in Liberia.

PEREIRA: Yes.

COOPER: So there seemed to be some level of annoyance on Louise's part with that. But she ended up going home. And, again, this is the home that Thomas Duncan was staying at. One of her children was there, a 13-year-old child, and also two adult nephews in their 20s. And again, for me, the most surprising thing is, the towels that Thomas Duncan used she says are still in the apartment but she put them in a plastic bag. The bed he slept in, that sweated in, the sheets are still on the bed, the pillows still on the bed, and she's waiting for word about what to do with all that.

BERMAN: There are the towels, there are the sheets, there were these days, parts of four days, where he was symptomatic inside this apartment with Louise, what does she say about possible contact with bodily fluids? We know --

PEREIRA: She might have tried to take his temperature or gone over to put a reassuring hand on him.

COOPER: She believes she didn't come in contact with bodily fluids. I asked her that, obviously, several times. You know, clearly she's worried. Clearly she's worried about other people's perception of her and her family. You know, as you said, caring for somebody who's sick, you know, you feel their forehead, you take their temperatures, if they're sweating you give them a cold cloth, something like that, so it's not clear to me what kind of contact they had. Clearly it's of concern to health officials who have told her, stay in the apartment for the next 21 days as she is monitored and as she really monitors herself.

PEREIRA: You told us that she had been given some bleach. So there have been some bleaching of the areas. Because I was just thinking about, you know, when you've got somebody sick in your house, it can be a mess and it can be a disaster. The bathroom, you know -

COOPER: Right. She said that there was Clorox - they had some Clorox in the apartment. She -- it wasn't clear to me exactly how extensive that cleaning has been. I asked her if she had cleaned the apartment. That's when she mentioned that the sheets were still on the bed, the pillow cases were still on the bed. And again, she -- you know, she wants to do the right thing. She's waiting for word on exactly, she says, on exactly what to do.

PEREIRA: Yes. What to do.

BERMAN: And I think, to be clear, and if she's watching, I think all we have is concern for her.

PEREIRA: Yes, absolutely.

BERMAN: And we hope she's OK in getting what she needs here. And we can understand, you know, her fear as people watch this.

COOPER: Sure.

BERMAN: I want to bring in Sanjay Gupta, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who I think is still with us right now, been listening to these reports from Anderson about Louise, the woman who came in contact with Thomas Duncan.

And, Sanjay, there's the issue of the sheets, the sheets that were on the bed that this man sweated in, the towels that he used that were used to help clean up whatever was going on there, and then the idea that she says she doesn't think she came in any contact with bodily fluids. Well, how easy is it to not come in contact with bodily fluids if you are a caregiver like that over several days?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It can be challenging. You know, you hear a lot about stories, again, in West Africa where family members helping care for a sick individual, you know, they try and do whatever they can to protect themselves, obviously much more challenging in West Africa than in the United States, but they don't think that they've come in contact and somehow they did because they get infected, sometimes entire families. Again, I don't want to suggest that's what's happened here to Louise, but, you know, this term abundance of caution, it applies very well here in terms of making sure secondary contacts don't become infected.

And also these sheets and these towels, we know Ebola can live outside the body. It can live on surfaces even for days at a time. We don't know how easy it is for someone then to get infected by touching one of those surfaces, but theoretically it is possible. So making sure that the -- that those sheets, those towels, everything are removed, put into biocontainment bags, that's a specific procedure, and then I can tell you here at the hospital, over here at Emory, they would incinerate, they would burn that stuff. And they were doing the same thing in Guinea when I was there as well. They called it the scorched earth policy. And they would move their hospital areas, those tents, they would just burn the entire area because they did not want to leave any chance that some of the virus was still around. And it doesn't sound like she's got than guidance.

If I could ask one thing as well because I've been hearing there were five children in four different schools that may have had contact with Mr. Duncan. Anderson, you're saying there's four people who are under quarantine. Do you have any idea why the numbers seem a little different there?

COOPER: Yes, I - I asked - yes, I asked about that and, to be honest, she wasn't very clear. And in our conversations, it was sometimes hard to sort of get a linear chronology of events. We ended up probably speaking for about half an hour just to try to map everything out. My understanding is, and that's what I had been led to believe, yesterday that there were five children as well. She insists there was one of her children, a 13-year-old, was in the apartment at the time that he was there and two nephews who are in their mid to late 20s were also in the apartment. And those are the people who are currently in the apartment.

She said she does have other children who are, my understanding, are living with somebody else or other people in Dallas, at least not currently living in her apartment. Whether those other kids visited the apartment at all while Thomas Duncan was there, I was not really clear on. She did not indicate that they did.

Clearly her -- one of her daughters did visit the apartment when Thomas Duncan was there to bring him tea at least once and she's the one who actually called the ambulance and I believe went over to the hospital with him. I asked if she rode in the ambulance. Louise wasn't clear. She believes her -- she says her daughter has her own car, so it's very possible her daughter drove separately, not in the ambulance.

So it's not clear to me the exact location of the other kids and whether or not they had any contact whatsoever. Clearly this one other daughter did and Louise was not sure if that daughter is also under quarantine.

PEREIRA: Anderson Cooper speaking exclusively with a woman named Louise, who is a partner of some sort of the patient that has Ebola in Dallas, Texas. Anderson, thank you so much.

COOPER: Sure.

PEREIRA: This has been very interesting and hopefully somebody is advocating for this woman and her family because they're going to need support if this is the beginning of a long stay in quarantine.

COOPER: And we'll have the conversation with Louise tonight on "AC 360" after we put it together.

PEREIRA: Fantastic. Anderson, thank you so much. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. You've got a long day ahead of you as well, my friend.

BERMAN: "Legal View" with Ashleigh Banfield starts right after a quick break.