Amber Vinson, the second health worker to be infected with Ebola after caring for patient Thomas Eric Duncan, may actually have had symptoms as early as last Friday, health officials said.
Vinson, a nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where Duncan was being treated and later died, flew to Cleveland on Friday to help plan her wedding. She returned to Dallas on Monday. She called health officials before her flight on Monday, reporting a minor fever. But an official with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention told her it was okay to get on the plane.
Earlier this week, CDC Director Tom Frieden said that because Vinson’s fever was low on Monday, it is unlikely that she was contagious. Still, he said it was mistake for her to fly.
But on Thursday, Dr. Chris Braden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told a press conference that “we have started to look at the possibility that she had symptoms going back as far as Saturday. … We can’t rule out (that) she might have had the start of her illness on Friday.”
This is significant because a person isn’t contagious with Ebola, which spreads through the transmission of bodily fluids, until he or she has symptoms of the disease.
Contact tracing
Because she may have been sick earlier than officials believed, the CDC is expanding their investigation to people the 29-year-old nurse may have come into contact with over the weekend. Included are passengers who were on her flight from Dallas-Fort Worth to Cleveland last Friday, Fox 8 Cleveland reported. Frontier Airlines says it is notifying up to 800 passengers total, a figure that includes those on last Friday’s Dallas-to-Cleveland flight, the return flight four days later, plus five subsequent trips taken by the plane used in that last flight.
On Thursday, a CDC spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that it was possible that passengers on Vinson’s Friday flight may have contracted the virus. Anyone who flew with her is encouraged to call 1-800-CDC INFO.
A total of twelve people have been placed under quarantine in Northeast Ohio after coming into contact with Vinson during her trip to Ohio. According to Fox News 8, people who were at the Coming Attractions bridal shop in Akron on Oct. 11 from 12 to 3:30 p.m. have been asked to call the health department.
Some schools in Texas and Ohio have also canceled classes over concerns that students or staff may have had contact with Vinson, though experts say that step was “unnecessary.”
Vinson is the second person in the United States to be infected with Ebola on U.S. soil. She and fellow nurse Nina Pham were infected after caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who was the first person to be diagnosed with the virus in U.S. Duncan died on October 8th.
American Ebola patients
On Wednesday, Vinson was flown to a special treatment unit at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital, which previously treated Americans Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol for Ebola and is still caring for an unnamed patient with Ebola who came there September 9.
Another person being treated for the virus in the U.S., freelance NBC cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, is “getting better every day” at Nebraska Medical Center, the hospital said Thursday.
The fourth person with Ebola in the United States, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurse Nina Pham, arrived via plane in Maryland on Thursday night. She was then transported, by ambulance, to the National Institutes of Health hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington.
The Dallas hospital said that transferring Nina Pham “is the right decision (because) many of the medical professionals who would normally staff the intensive care unit (are) sidelined for continuous monitoring.” Some 76 workers who cared for Duncan, like Vinson and Pham, have been asked to do things like regularly take their temperatures to gauge whether they have Ebola. They have also been restricted from air travel out of an abundance of caution.
Government response
In Washington, President Barack Obama voiced opposition to a travel ban from the countries ravaged most by the virus but did appoint an “Ebola czar” to focus on the issue at home. Ron Klain, a former chief of staff to both Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Al Gore, will be in charge of coordinating the domestic response to Ebola.
Also this week, President Obama signed an executive order authorizing the deployment of National Guard troops to West Africa — where most all of the nearly 9,000 reported Ebola cases and 4,500 deaths have been occurring, according to the World Health Organization — to help authorities there deal with the devastating outbreak.
In a congressional hearing on Thursday, federal and Texas health officials faced heated questioning about how Ebola has been handled so far in the United States and how it will be handled in the future.
Dr. Daniel Varga — the chief clinical officer for Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital’s parent company, Texas Health Resources — admitted hospital staff “made mistakes” the first time that Duncan visited there in late September, letting him leave despite his symptoms and the fact he’d just come from West Africa.
“We did not correctly diagnose his symptoms as those of Ebola,” Varga testified Thursday to the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee. “We are deeply sorry.”
While procedures may change — especially after some well-publicized oversights — Frieden said his agency’s overarching goal will not. “Our top priority, our focus is to work 24/7 to protect Americans,” Frieden said. “That’s our mission.”