Second Dallas nurse with Ebola was on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143.
CDC asking all 132 passengers to call and be interviewed
DALLAS – A second nurse who
treated Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has been diagnosed with the
deadly disease a day after flying from Ohio to Texas, officials said.
The nurse, identifed by her family as Amber Joy Vinson, 29, reported
a fever on Tuesday and was immediately isolated at Texas Health
Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, officials said. Federal health
officials said she is ill and will soon be transferred to a
biocontainment unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.
The
CDC said Vinson was not experiencing symptoms at the time of her
flight, but is asking all 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight
1143 from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth which landed at 8:16 p.m.
Monday to call 1-800-CDC-INFO.
“After
1 p.m. E.T., public health professionals will begin interviewing
passengers about the flight, answering their questions, and arranging
follow up,” the CDC said in a statement. “Individuals who are determined to be at any potential risk will be actively monitored.”
Vinson
was among 76 hospital workers who cared for Duncan, a Liberian citizen
who died from Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian a week ago.
At an early morning news conference, a bleary eyed Dr. Daniel Varga, the hospital's chief clinical officer, called Vinson's inefection “an unprecedented crisis.”
“This is a heroic person, a person who has dedicated her
life to helping others and is a servant leader,” Dallas County Judge
Clay Jenkins said during a news conference.
Jenkins called the second
diagnosis a “gut shot” to the hospital staff. He acknowledged that
officials are making contingency plans and that others who treated
Duncan may develop Ebola as well.
“That is a very real possibility,” he said.It wasn't immediately known how the Vinson contracted the disease, but Varga said, “It’s clear there was an exposure somewhere, sometime in their treatment of Mr. Duncan.”
“We’re a hospital that may have done some things different with the benefit of what we know today,” he said. “Make no mistake, no one wants to get this right more than our hospital.”
The latest positive test for Ebola was determined at about midnight Tuesday at a state laboratory in Austin.
A hazardous-materials team is
now decontaminating Vinson's Dallas apartment in a community not far
from the hospital. City officials said she lived alone and had no pets.
Vinson, a nurse in Texas for two years according to state
records, was reportedly in Ohio visiting family near Akron. She arrived
in Cleveland last Saturday on Frontier flight 1142, according to the airline.Vinson becomes the third person to be diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas since Sept. 30. City officials addressed the public early Wednesday.
“I continue to believe that while Dallas is anxious about this — and, with this news this morning, the anxiety level goes up a level — we are not fearful,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said. “It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.”
Duncan, who had travelled from
West Africa to Dallas days before becoming ill, was the first person to
ever be diagnosed with the virus in the United States. The disease, for
which there is no known cure, has killed more than 4,000 people in West
Africa in 2014, the World Health Organization estimates.
Duncan, 42, was treated at Texas
Health Presbyterian for 10 days before his death. Last Friday,
26-year-old nurse Nina Pham began running a fever while at home and went
to the hospital, where she was isolated. She tested positive for Ebola
on Sunday. Hospital officials reported that she was in good condition as
of late Tuesday.
Texas Health Presbyterian
officials have said Pham wore protective clothing and insist that staff
followed safety precautions issued by federal officials. How Pham, a
nurse for four years, contracted Ebola hasn’t been determined, but CDC
director Dr. Tom Frieden has said he believes there was a breach in
safety procedures.
Pham’s diagnosis sparked
immediate concern for workers at Texas Health Presbyterian. On Tuesday,
the CDC said 76 health care workers who could have come in contact with
Duncan were being monitored for symptoms.
“As we have said before, because
of our ongoing investigation, it is not unexpected that there would be
additional exposures,” the CDC said in a written statement early
Wednesday. “An additional health care worker testing positive for Ebola
is a serious concern, and the CDC has already taken active steps to
minimize the risk to health care workers and the patient.”
News of the third Ebola
infection comes a day after the largest U.S. nurses' union alleged that
some Texas Health Presbyterian workers had reported that nurses treated
Duncan for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly
changing protocols.
RoseAnn DeMoro, executive
director of Nurses United, said the allegations came from “several” and
“a few” nurses, but she refused repeated inquiries to state how many, the Associated Press reported.
She said that the organization had vetted the claims and that the
nurses cited were in a position to know what had occurred at the
hospital. She refused to elaborate.
A hospital spokesman did not respond to specific claims by the nurses but said the hospital has not received similar complaints.
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