DALLAS — A 29-year-old nurse who is the second Texas hospital worker to test positive for Ebola is "ill but clinically stable" and will be transferred late Wednesday to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.
Emory University Hospital 's Infectious Disease Unit is where the first two U.S. Ebola patients — both health missionary workers stationed in Liberia — were treated and released in August. Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where the nurses work, has only three isolation units.
The announcement came only hours after the CDC confirmed that the nurse, identified by family members as Amber Vinson, had flown on a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland to Dallas.
CDC director Thomas Frieden said she had violated CDC guidelines against anyone using public transport while undergoing self-monitoring for exposure to Ebola. Frieden said Vinson did not report that her temperature had risen a small amount, to 99.5 degrees, before she departed for Dallas. He said her risk to other passengers was "very low."
"We will from this moment forward ensure that no other individual who is being monitored for exposure undergoes travel in any way other than controlled movement," Frieden said.
The CDC also asked the 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Oct. 13 from Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth to call the CDC at 1-800-CDC INFO (1-800-232-4636).
Frontier Airlines said in a statement that the passenger "exhibited no symptoms or sign of illness" while on the flight and that the plane had since been thoroughly cleaned.
Also Wednesday, Kent State University said the second nurse, Vinson, was related to three university employees and that they were asking the workers to stay off campus for 21 days "out of an abundance of caution."
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the additional infection is "a serious concern."
"What happened there (in Dallas), regardless of the reason, is not acceptable. It shouldn't have happened," Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of NIH, said Wednesday on MSNBC.
Vinson was among more than 70 workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who helped care for Ebola patient Thomas Duncan, a Liberian national who died of the virus.
The CDC said Wednesday that Vinson and the first nurse to contract the disease, Nina Pham, 26, had been in the room with Duncan during his most intense period of vomiting and diarrhea, but before he had been diagnosed as having Ebola.
Ebola, which has killed more than 4,000 people in West Africa, is transmitted through bodily fluids. Duncan apparently contracted the virus while helping neighbors transport a young Ebola patient to the hospital.
New cases of Ebola in West Africa could reach 10,000 per week by December as the virus outbreak races out of control there, World Health Organization officials said this week.
At a morning news conference, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said he could not rule out more cases among 75 other hospital staffers who cared for Duncan and were being monitored by the CDC.
"We are preparing contingencies for more and that is a real possibility," Jenkins said.
Dallas authorities moved quickly to try to contain any spread of the disease from the latest case.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings, who rushed to the health worker's apartment early Wednesday, said a contamination team quickly treated common areas around the apartment and were preparing to enter the woman's unit.
The mayor, who went door to door at the apartment to advise other residents of the situation, said that it was the city's goal to provide as much information as possible and "to deal with facts not fear."
He also sought to allay concerns over the latest case, which he conceded had ratcheted up anxiety in the city.
"It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better," Rawlings said.
The first nurse to contract the disease, Nina Pham, said Tuesday that she is "doing well" and thanked the medical staff at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital for her care. Jenkins said Wednesday that her condition had been upgraded to "good."
None of the original 48 people who had contact with Duncan prior to hospitalization have shown signs of the virus, Jenkins said.
While health officials have not determined how the two nurses became infected with Ebola, a nurses' union slammed the hospital for its handling of the Duncan case.
According to a statement released late Tuesday by the largest U.S. nurses' union, Duncan was left in an open area of a Dallas emergency room for hours, and the nurses treating him worked for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols,
Wendell Watson, a Presbyterian spokesman, did not respond to specific claims by the nurses but said the hospital has not received similar complaints.
"Patient and employee safety is our greatest priority and we take compliance very seriously," he said in a statement. "We have numerous measures in place to provide a safe working environment, including mandatory annual training and a 24/7 hotline and other mechanisms that allow for anonymous reporting."
The pool of potential contacts being monitored by CDC specialists in Dallas dropped from around 126 to 118 after some of the potential carriers of the Ebola virus were ruled out, said David Daigle, a CDC spokesman in Dallas.
Of those 118, 48 are expected to be released from the watch this weekend when they surpass their 21-day incubation period for the virus, he said. That number could dip or rise in the coming days, as more potential contacts are ruled out or investigators find others who have been in contact with the deceased original Ebola patient or the two nurses hospitalized for signs of the virus.
"We really hope it doesn't grow," he said. "But it may well."
CDC specialists are still reviewing all the steps taken by hospital staff to determine where, if any, a breach in protocol may have occurred, Daigle said.
We're just now starting to take a hard look at infection control," Daigle said.
Contributing: Gregory Korte in Washington, Kim Hjelmgaard in London, William M. Welch in Los Angeles; Associated Press.
Members of the Dallas Fire-Rescue Haz Mat Unit tapes off the door of a second health-care worker who
tested positive for the Ebola virus on Oct. 15 at the The Village Bend East apartments in Dallas.
The worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital was monitoring herself for symptoms and reported
a fever. She was in isolation within 90 minutes.
Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/10/15/texas-health-care-worker-ebola-second-case/17290575/
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