October 13, 2014

Ebola Test Is Positive in Second Texas Health Worker


An ambulance on Wednesday took Amber Joy Vinson to the Dallas airport for transport to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Credit Jaime R. Carrero/Reuters       




N.Y. TIMES

New shortcomings emerged Wednesday in the nation’s response to the Ebola virus after it was revealed that a second nurse was infected with Ebola at a hospital here and that she had traveled on a commercial flight the day before she showed symptoms of the disease.
The nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, 29, was on the medical team that cared for the Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan after he was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28 and put in isolation. Ms. Vinson should not have traveled on a commercial flight, the director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said after learning that she was a passenger on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 on Monday, flying from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth.
But hours after the director, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, made that statement, one official said that Ms. Vinson had indeed called the C.D.C. before boarding the plane, but was allowed to fly because she barely had a fever.




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  1. The CDC is now trying to reach 132 passengers who were on the plane with her as a matter of urgency. 
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New York’s premier public hospital will become a center for treatment of the Ebola virus in the city, hospital and city officials said on Tuesday, amid widespread concerns that the disease may not be so easily contained by every hospital that has an isolation unit.
Bellevue Hospital Center, the country’s oldest public hospital, would receive any confirmed Ebola cases within the 11-member public hospital system, a Bellevue spokesman said. It would also be available to receive transfers from private hospitals in the city.