CT hospital practiced for Ebola response. ‘There’s always a chance it will happen,’: official says.

Hartford Courant – Friday, July 3, 2026
By Pamela McLoughlin

The terrifying Ebola virus isn’t likely to come to Connecticut or even the United States, but “you can never say it will never happen,” according to a Yale New Haven Hospital official.

So Yale New Haven medical and hospital staff have recently prepared the hospital and themselves for the just in case scenario with an intense preparedness drill that happened in three parts.

Michael Aniskiewicz, manager for the hospital’s infection prevention department, said they wrote a grant for training in high consequence infectious disease to become a level 2 responder and chose Ebola before the more recent escalations in African countries.

Staff at Yale New Haven Hospital does a drill as preparation for for a potential Ebola virus victim. In this case, the victim acted the part during the hospital preparedness drill for the possibility of the infectious disease.

Yale New Haven had an ebola scare in 2014, when the hospital reported on Oct. 16 that a patient with Ebola-like symptoms had been admitted. The person did not have Ebola.

The current outbreak of a type of Ebola with no approved treatment or vaccine continues to grow, with 1,307 people infected and at least 377 dead across three provinces in eastern Congo. It could be the worst Ebola outbreak yet.

Yale New Haven received $500,000 in funding and conducted the training over three sessions, using the grant from the National Emergency Special Pathogens Trading and Education Center.

“The whole point is to increase the level of preparedness in case a high consequence case lands in our ED,” he said.

The drill over three days began, unbeknownst to staff with a man coming to the Emergency Department with reported symptoms of Ebola. The man, a lesser known staff member who was acting, mentioned to staff he had recently traveled to Uganda.

Staff quickly diagnosed him, soon learned he was an actor, but in keeping with the drill, isolated him, them moved him to intensive care, following all protocols. The goal was to identify, isolate, inform the right people in a timely manner, officials said.

Although they used Ebola – coincidently a hot topic now – the protocol would cover all high consequence infectious diseases he said, including hantavirus, lafsa fever and more found around the world.

Aniskiewicz said a high consequence infectious disease is one for which there’s no vaccine, no known treatment, more easily transmitted, and a higher likelihood of death. He said Covid-19 was at first considered a high consequence infectious disease, but that changed as they developed tests and found treatment.

Not only is Ebola hot right now because of the increasing number of cases continents away, but it and infections of its kind are of heightened concern because there’s such an influx of people from around the world who were visiting for FIFA World Cup events, including close to Connecticut in New York and Massachusetts, meaning big crowds and an opportunity for anything that’s brought in to spread.

Aniskiewicz said it’s all coincidence with increasing Ebola numbers and the World Cup soccer event, but has upped the fears of Ebola and other infections diseases with all the traveling and crowds.

“I don’t think there’s really a risk of seeing it in the United States or Connecticut,” Aniskiewicz said. But one of the reason hospitals plan, he said, is because, “You can never say it will never happen. There’s always a chance it will happen.”

Even though there has been a lot of reporting that easy travel around the world is less likely to keep these diseases at bay, Aniskiewicz said people traveling from selected regions where Ebola thrives are going into a few select airports where they are screened and followed for 21 days if there are any red flags.

But Aniskiewicz said there’s always a chance of something getting in through the cracks of a screening system.

Jordan Swenson, Yale-New Haven Health system manager for the office of Emergency Preparedness said in simulations, they go through the steps as if they were in real life.

“The objective is to keep all our staff safe and we need to take care of our patients,” she said, noting the actor/employee stayed in character the entire time.” I think that our team has been doing a phenomenal job. I give them an A plus. They showed a lot of compassion.”

Swenson said regular visitors to the hospital took lots of photos because staff were wearing their most high level protective gear.

Swenson said Ebola is “low risk right now,” but, “Anything is possible. That’s why we prepare.”

The New York Times reported this week that, more than a month into the crisis, the chronic shortages of even the most basic supplies that blighted the early response are starting to ease. International aid is beginning to flow into Congo, with planeloads of protective gear and disease specialists trying their best to save lives. But attending to the sick is not the same as containing the epidemic.

Further, even with the scaled-up effort, the Ebola response still has major gaps. Severe cuts in U.S. aid battered Congo’s health system, leaving it badly weakened before the outbreak struck. And despite more than 1,200 cases and 300 deaths confirmed, nobody knows the true scale of the outbreak, or how far it has spread, the NYT reported.

Health workers have reported some skepticism and attacks over Ebola from residents in the affected areas of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, according to the Associated Press.

Cases also have been confirmed in neighboring Uganda, as well as one in France in a doctor who returned from Congo.

The United Nations ​warned in a report on Tuesday that if the virus spreads into other neighboring countries including Rwanda and Angola, it could cost Africa up to $3.6 billion and result in 328,000 job losses.

For the 2014 outbreak, the then 29 acute-care hospitals in Connecticut were preparing to screen, isolate and treat potential Ebola patients and protect staff, according to the then Public Health commissioner. A man in Texas became the first person in the U.S. to die of Ebola following the outbreak in West Africa in 2014. He at one point in his treatment was reportedly sent home with a high fever, only to return, and then succumbed to the disease.

Reporting by the Associated Press is included.

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