The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has announced on Wednesday, October 15, that another Dallas health worker has tested positive of Ebola.
Twenty-nine-year-old Amber Vinson was working alongside Nina Pham, the recent Ebola patient, in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital. Both were chosen to help take care Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient to be diagnosed with the virus around the last week of September. He eventually died from the disease.
While more than 100 people had been quarantined due to possible contact with Duncan, the hospital health workers including these two nurses were simply instructed to monitor themselves for any possible symptoms, including slight fever. They were also allowed to travel but not to board a commercial flight, a protocol that may have been breached when Vinson flew from Dallas to Cleveland, OH, to see her mother and prepare for her upcoming wedding.
According to Thomas Frieden, CDC director, Vinson flew on Monday to Cleveland onboard commercial flight Frontier Airlines 1143, a day before she admitted herself to the hospital for isolation. He also confirmed that the nurse already had a low-grade fever around this period.
Frieden, nevertheless, assured the public that the risk of exposure of the passengers around this period was very low since her fever didn't reach 100.4 degrees and that she wasn't extracting body fluids like vomit or bleeding during the flight.
But because of the very small window between her flying and the time her test came back positive, the CDC is still reaching out to all passengers to assess their level of exposure. Vinson, meanwhile, has to undergo another test to confirm the positive result. The plane that carried Vinson was also disinfected. Nevertheless, Vinson mentioned that she was allowed to travel by the CDC prior to her diagnosis.
Unlike Pham, Vinson will be treated in Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where another Ebola patient is recovering. Her condition is described as clinically stable but ill.
