A Dallas nurse who has tested positive for Ebola violated infection control guidelines by flying on a commercial jetliner from Cleveland to Dallas the night before she arrived at the hospital with a fever, officials said today. The CDC is reaching out to the 132 passengers who flew with the woman on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Monday evening, landing in Dallas at 8:16 p.m. The health care worker had no symptoms during the flight, the CDC said, but officials are identifying and notifying passengers because she arrived at the hospital with a fever the following morning. Frontier Airlines flight - and the same jet when it was reused hours later. Lots of potential exposure to flight crews, passengers, and service crews. And all the people they come into contact with. This is starting to look like a bad movie
The nurse, who has been identified as Amber Vinson, 29, was part of the team at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died of Ebola on Oct. 8. Vinson was one of the nurses who was very involved with the care for Ebola patient Duncan, who died of Ebola at the Dallas hospital. She drew his blood, inserted catheters, and dealt with his bodily fluids, according to Duncan's medical records obtained by the Associated Press.
Both nurses who became infected had contact with Duncan in his first days in the Dallas hospital -- on Sept. 28, 29 and 30 -- when he was having "substantial amounts" of vomiting and had diarrhea.
notably on these dates the hospital admin did not have full protective equipment on their people - see other post about this
He said officials will be assessing other health workers who had extensive contact with Duncan on these days.
She is the second member of the hospital staff to contract the virus and a Dallas official warned today that additional cases among the hospital's health care workers are a "very real possibility."
She will be transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta after she became the second person to contract the disease while working in the Dallas facility.
One question that has been raised is why Duncan was not transported from Dallas to one of the two other hospitals with specialized isolation units -- one in Omaha, Nebraska, and the other at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia -- which have successfully treated Ebola patients.