2nd Ebola Nurse May Have Had More Advanced Stage During Flights

[Rayzur]

2nd Nurse with Ebola may have had worse case during flights

Amber Vinson

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DENVER - The president of Frontier Airlines says a nurse who was on flights between Dallas and Cleveland and who later tested positive for Ebola may have been at a more advanced stage of the illness than previously thought.

Amber Joy Vinson, 29, was diagnosed with Ebola on Wednesday. She had helped treat Thomas Eric Duncan, the first Ebola patient in the U.S., at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital before the Liberian man died Oct. 8.

Late Wednesday, Vinson was transferred to Atlanta's Emory University Hospital, which has successfully treated two American Ebola patients without the disease spreading further.

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It remains unclear how she and fellow Texas Health Presbyterian nurse Nina Pham acquired the virus, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Controls.

Frontier Airlines president Barry Biffle emailed employees Friday about the findings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the CDC has assured the Denver-based airline that crewmembers on the flights are at a very low risk of exposure.

The airline put the pilots and flight attendants on leave for 21 days, which health experts consider the outer limit of how long it would take someone exposed to Ebola to become sick.

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Biffle says passengers on Vinson's flight from Dallas to Cleveland on Oct. 10 and her return flight to Dallas on Monday have been notified. Officials said Vinson was visiting family in northeast Ohio to prepare for her wedding.

The CDC said it is attempting to track down all 132 passengers aboard the plane she took because of "the proximity in time between the evening flight and first report of illness. Vinson exhibited no signs or symptoms of illness while on flight 1143, according to the crew.

Pham was taken to the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland on Thursday night to continue her treatment.

 

 

Forgot to add that i read somewhere that the crew was not immediately grounded..and came in contact with another 800 before they were.... probably okay and even if they were infected (doubtful) they would not have been contagious..... I just can't believe protocol didn't ground them immediately....

Edited October 18, 2014 by Rayzur

[Nadita]

Yep, the plane made 6 flights later. Ebola virus life span on dry surface is several hours and several days in blood and urine.

[captl1]

Amazing how we always seem to find out after the fact.

[jobug38]

This is a planned event by the PTB plain and simple!! Take precautions to boost you &your families immune system! May God be with us all!

[Rayzur]

Israeli prof.: US lagging behind on Ebola precautions, U.S. needs infrared screening at airports. (TOI).HT : IsraelMatzav.

An American-Israeli expert in infectious diseases has attacked the United States' failure to screen airline passengers by taking their temperatures using infrared cameras as a means of preventing passengers with Ebola from boarding planes.

According to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Professor Leslie Lobel, “the world has been asleep for 50 years regarding infectious diseases and Ebola is the wake-up call.”

Lobel is a world-recognized virologist who has studied the virus and others emanating from the African continent.

“Fifty years ago, we were dealing with eradicating polio, smallpox and yellow fever which had similarly high mortality rates. Today, most of the world seems to understand the need to screen passengers in airports using infrared cameras for elevated temperature as a simple precaution — the US is lagging behind,” said Dr. Lobel.

The American-Israeli professor has been researching a cure for hemorrhagic fever viruses, including Ebola, for a decade, the university said in a press release. ...

Earlier Friday, the World Health Organization admitted that it botched attempts to stop the now-spiraling Ebola outbreak in West Africa, blaming factors including incompetent staff and a lack of information.

“Nearly everyone involved in the outbreak response failed to see some fairly plain writing on the wall,” WHO said in a draft internal document obtained by The Associated Press, noting that experts should have realized that traditional containment methods wouldn’t work in a region with porous borders and broken health systems.

 

 

This just keeps getting better and better....