Stanford doctor who treated Ebola patients ends isolation

Dr. Colin Bucks (center) takes a tour of the Ebola simulation lab at Stanford with Administrative Director Brandon Bond. Dr. Colin Bucks (center) takes a tour of the Ebola simulation lab at Stanford with Administrative Director Brandon Bond. Photo: James Tensuan / Special To The Chronicle Photo: James Tensuan / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Stanford doctor who treated Ebola patients ends isolation 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Dr. Colin Bucks, the Stanford emergency physician who went into isolation for three weeks after returning from treating Ebola patients in Liberia, finally stepped out of quarantine Friday and went back to work.

After a joyful reunion with his wife and dog at their Redwood City home at midnight, Bucks had a leisurely breakfast out — his first public meal — and then got to work on three weeks’ worth of errands.

His first stop: his barber. It was a little strange, he said, feeling someone touch his head after all that time with no direct human contact.

“It’s an adjustment,” said Bucks, 43. “But did I have even one degree of concern that it was risky? No. I was just looking at my head and thinking it’s been 2½ months since I got a haircut. I had to do that before being seen in public again.”

Bucks spent five weeks in September and October treating more than 130 Ebola patients in northeast Liberia, volunteering with the International Medical Corps. He returned to the United States amid peak public anxiety about the Ebola outbreak, and just as a new case had been reported in a New York City doctor who had treated patients in West Africa.

So when Bucks got back to the Bay Area, he volunteered to quarantine himself in his own home. He opted not to even go jogging alone outside, and only interacted with others by phone or computer. He talked to his wife daily, but they only saw each other a few times when she needed to pick up something from the house, and he left it on the porch and then waved at her from a front window.

Bucks said he had always planned to distance himself from others upon his return to the United States, but he hadn’t expected to follow strict quarantine protocols that left him totally homebound for 21 days.

“Medically, a full quarantine is not necessary,” Bucks said. “It would have been completely safe for me to have gone shopping or even sit in a movie theater. But there’s value in calming a community climate and not elevating people’s levels of anxiety.”

Bucks said he was never angry at having to be quarantined for so long. “But I was inconvenienced certainly.”

More doctors to return

Several Bay Area doctors are in West Africa to help with the outbreak and are expected to come home in the coming weeks, and public health agencies already are making plans for their returns.

Depending on their level of interaction with Ebola patients, the returning doctors may face strict quarantine. But most of them will probably have some flexibility in their isolation. They’ll be told to avoid public gatherings and direct interactions with others, said Dr. Tomas Aragon, health officer with the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Although Bucks was back at Stanford on Friday, he’s not scheduled to return to patient care for another couple of weeks, due to regular rotations and not the quarantine, he said. Anyway, he’ll need some time to settle into his job again — passwords need to be reset, routines relearned.

Aside from getting back into the rhythm of his work, Bucks said he’ll continue to consult other hospitals — in the U.S. and abroad — on Ebola care standards. He’s also advising Liberia health officials on changes in medical records-keeping that could help monitor and control disease outbreaks.

More than 14,400 people have been sickened by Ebola in the current outbreak, the worst in world history, according to the World Health Organization. More than 5,100 people have died.

Focus on Africa

The disease has hit Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone hardest. The outbreak seems to have abated in Libera, where the president this week announced an end to the country’s state of emergency. But a new, small outbreak in Mali raised concerns about the disease spreading further there.

Bucks said he’s eager for Americans to return their attention to the Ebola fight in West Africa instead of focusing on domestic worries. Dr. Paul Auerbach, chief of the division of emergency medicine at Stanford, agreed.

“We all realize how important it is for the Ebola battle to be fought in West Africa. That’s our best shot at containing the epidemic and protecting all other countries,” Auerbach said. “People like Colin who can go over and demonstrably do good things are an encouragement for others to do the same. And that’s so important.”

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @erinallday