A nurse infected with Ebola may have had symptoms sooner, authorities say, and an airline is notifying passengers who were on the same flights she took from Dallas to Cleveland.
In addition to Amber Vinson's return trip, Frontier Airlines is also reaching out to others who were in five subsequent flights that used the same plane she flew in from Cleveland.
Vinson was hospitalized Tuesday, a day after she took Frontier Airlines flight 1142 from Cleveland to Dallas.
Vinson, a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, was part of a team that treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. He died last week.
Frontier Airlines says it is notifying up to 800 passengers linked to Vinson's flights. They include those aboard her Dallas-to-Cleveland flight on October 10, a return flight four days later and five subsequent trips by the plane used in the latter flight.
The expanded efforts came after officials said she may have shown symptoms of the virus four days before authorities first indicated. Ebola is contagious when someone is symptomatic.
At first, authorities indicated Vinson had a slightly elevated temperature of 99.5 degrees Fahrenheit, which was below the fever threshold for Ebola, but didn't show any symptoms of the disease while on her Monday flight.
Did she have symptoms earlier?
But Dr. Chris Braden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a more cautionary approach Thursday.
"We have started to look at the possibility that she had symptoms going back as far as Saturday," he said. "We can't rule out (that) she might have had the start of her illness on Friday."
Based on the new information, he said, the contacts were expanded to those aboard her flight out of Dallas.
Her uncle, Lawrence Vinson, said Thursday night that his niece didn't feel sick until Tuesday morning, when she went to the hospital with a temperature of 100.3 degrees (which is still below the CDC's Ebola threshold).
'Extremely low' risk
Yet a federal official with direct knowledge of the case gave different information to CNN's Elizabeth Cohen, relating that Vinson said she felt fatigue, muscle ache and malaise while she was in Ohio. She did not have diarrhea or vomiting while in that state or on the flight home.
Health officials are working from the assumption that Vinson may have been ill for longer than once thought.
The CDC said there's an "extremely low" risk to anyone on Frontier's Cleveland-to-Dallas flight, though his agency was reaching out to all 132 passengers as part of "extra margins of safety." Frontier is also grounding its six crew members for 21 days -- the maximum time between when a person can contract Ebola and show symptoms.
In addition, "12 confirmed contacts of Amber Vinson in Ohio ... are currently under quarantine," according to Summit County's assistant health commissioner Donna Skoda. They include at least two people who worked at a bridal store where the 29-year-old nurse went for her wedding planning.
Other Ebola cases
Vinson was flown to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital, where Lawrence Vinson said she is "feeling OK."
The hospital treated Americans Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, and are also caring for an unnamed person with Ebola who came there on September 9.
Another person being treated for the virus, freelance NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, is "getting better every day" at Nebraska Medical Center, hospital spokesman Taylor Wilson said Thursday.
The fourth person with Ebola in the United States,Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurse Nina Pham, is undergoing treatment at the National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
An additional 76 workers who cared for Duncan, like Vinson and Pham did, have been asked to do things like regularly take their temperatures to gauge whether they have Ebola.
About 50 people from Texas Health Presbyterian have signed a document legally restricting where they can go and what they can do until they are clear of Ebola, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said Thursday night.
Among other things, they'll be placed on a "Do Not Board list" that would prohibit them from flying commercially like Vinson did.
No comments:
Post a Comment