(CNN) – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is establishing an Ebola response team composed of experts, said CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden. "For any hospital anywhere in the country that has a confirmed case of Ebola, we will put a team on the ground within hours," Frieden said.
A team like that may have prevented a Dallas nurse from contracting the disease, Frieden said.
"I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the first patient was diagnosed. That might have prevented this infection," Frieden said. "But we will do that from this day onward with any case anywhere in the U.S."
There were at least 76 health-care workers who may have come into contact with Texas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan after he was hospitalized, Frieden said. "Once he was hospitalized, there were at least 76 people who might have come into contact with him or his blood and are being monitored now," Frieden said.
Duncan died last week at a Dallas hospital.
Dallas nurse is 'clinically stable'
Officials are still trying to figure out how a Dallas nurse who cared for Duncan was infected. Nina Pham, a recent nursing college graduate, got her certification less than two months earlier. On Monday, she got a blood transfusionfrom American Ebola survivor Kent Brantly and is "clinically stable."
