Ebola-infected nurse to be transferred from Texas to special unit in Maryland

One of two healthcare workers diagnosed with Ebola in the US is being transferred from the Texas facility where she contracted the virus to a special bio-containment unit in Maryland a day after her colleague was taken to a similar facility in Atlanta.

Nina Pham, the first person to contract Ebola in the US, is expected to be transferred on Thursday from Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas to a National Institutes of Health (NIH) isolation unit in Bethesda, Maryland, the agency confirmed in a statement.

“She will receive state-of-the-art care in this high-level containment facility, which is one of a small number of such facilities in the United States,” the NIH said. “The unit staff is trained in strict infection control practices optimized to prevent spread of potentially transmissible agents such as Ebola.”

The NIH facility has one of four biocontainment units in the country.

Pham’s colleague, Amber Vinson, was transferred to a similar unit in Atlanta on Wednesday night after testing positive for Ebola. Both women contracted Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last week.

Vinson, 29, tested positive for Ebola a day after she flew on a commercial flight from Cleveland, Ohio, to Dallas with a low-grade temperature. Vinson, who was self-monitoring for signs and symptoms of Ebola after treating Duncan, contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) before boarding her flight to Ohio, and was allowed to proceed.

Vinson’s temperature was 99.5F (37.5C) before boarding the flight on 13 October, the CDC director, Tom Frieden, said on Wednesday. But since that was below the CDC’s temperature threshold of 100.4F, she is believed to have posed very little risk to those around her on the flight. Meanwhile, the CDC and Frontier airlines are scrambling to contact and interview all 132 passengers aboard her flight.

Schools in Ohio and Texas have closed so health officials can disinfect the buildings after learning staff or students may have been on the same plane, although possibly not on the same flight. A school district in northern Texas said on Twitter that three of its schools would be closed, and two children who were on the same flight as Vinson have been asked to stay home and monitor their temperatures for 21 days.

Earlier on Thursday, a nurse at the Dallas hospital who treated her co-worker Pham after she tested positive for Ebola on Sunday told the Today Show’s Matt Lauer that the hospital did not adequately protect staff in the days leading up to Duncan’s diagnosis.

“I watched them violate basic principles of nursing,” Aguirre said in an interview that aired on Thursday. “I would try anything and everything to refuse to go there to be treated. I would feel at risk by going there. If I don’t actually have Ebola, I may contract it there.”

Aguirre said she did not treat Duncan, but she said she spoke with co-workers who did.

“It was just a little chaotic scene. Our infectious disease department was contacted to ask, ‘what is our protocol?’ And their answer was: ‘We don’t know. We’re going to have to call you back,’” she said.

Aguirre’s interview aired hours after the hospital hit back at similar allegations made by National Nurses United, the country’s largest nurses’ union. The hospital categorically rejected most of the claims the union made, apparently on behalf of anonymous healthcare workers at Texas Health Presbyterian, about the hospital not protecting its staff after Duncan was diagnosed, saying it was always in step with CDC protocol.