The announcement of the effort came after top health officials repeatedly assured the public during the last two weeks that they were doing everything possible to control the outbreak by deploying infectious-disease specialists to the hospital where a Liberian man was diagnosed with Ebola and later died.

Centers for Disease Control director Tom Frieden outlined a series of steps designed to stop the spread of the disease in the United States, including increased training for health care workers and changes at the Texas hospital where the virus was diagnosed to minimize the risk of more infections.

FORT WORTH — The nation’s top-disease fighting agency acknowledged Tuesday that an American nurse might not have been infected with Ebola if a special response team had been sent to Dallas immediately after a Liberian man there was diagnosed with the disease.


‘‘I wish we had put a team like this on the ground the day the patient — the first patient — was diagnosed. That might have prevented [the infection of the nurse]. But we will do that from today onward with any case anywhere in the US,’’ Frieden said.

Frieden described the new response team as having some of the world’s leading experts in how to care for Ebola and protect health care workers. They planned to review everything from how the isolation room is physically laid out, to what protective equipment health workers use, to waste management and decontamination.

President Obama, speaking at the end of a meeting with US and allied military leaders, declared that ‘‘the world is not doing enough’’ to fight Ebola.

‘‘Everybody’s going to have to do more than they are doing right now, he said.

Nina Pham, a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, became the first person to contract the disease on US soil as she cared for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian national. Pham released a statement Tuesday through the hospital saying she is ‘‘doing well,’’ and the hospital listed her in good condition.


The nurse, 26, had been in the Liberian man’s room often, from the day he was placed in intensive care until the day before he died last week.

‘‘I’m doing well and want to thank everyone for their kind wishes and prayers,’’ she said.

Pham and other health care workers wore protective gear, including gowns, gloves, masks, and face shields — and sometimes full-body suits — when caring for Duncan. Health officials have said there was a breach in protocol that led to the infection, but they do not know where it occurred.

Among the changes announced Tuesday by Frieden was a plan to limit the number of health care workers who care for Ebola patients so they “can become more familiar and more systematic in how they put on and take off protective equipment, and they can become more comfortable in a healthy way with providing care in the isolation unit.”

On Tuesday, Frieden said 76 people at the hospital might have had exposure to Duncan, and all of them are being monitored for fever and other symptoms.

Frieden said he was fully aware of the fear among health care workers in Texas and around the country about the risks of contracting the virus should it spread further. In response, he said an on-site manager who is an expert in infectious diseases will be in charge of every step of the process, along with new training for health care workers.