A second Texas healthcare worker who treated the first patient in the United States to be diagnosed with Ebola has tested positive for the disease, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement yesterday.
The woman, identified to Reuters by her grandmother as Amber Vinson, 29, was isolated immediately after reporting a fever late on Tuesday, Texas Department of State Health Services officials said. She had treated Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the US.
We are preparing contingencies for more, and that is a very real possibility
“Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored,” the department said.
Later yesterday it was revealed that nurse Vinson had travelled by jetliner a day before she reported symptoms, US and airline officials said. The health worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas had taken a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, the officials said. The circumstances under which Vinson travelled were not immediately known. But the latest revelation raised fresh questions about the handling of Duncan’s case and its aftermath by both the hospital and the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 4,447 people have died in West Africa in the worst Ebola outbreak since the disease was identified in 1976, but cases in the US and Europe have been limited.
“Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored,” the health department said.
During the weekend, 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham became the first person to be infected with Ebola in the US. She had cared for Duncan during much of his 11 days in the hospital. He died in an isolation ward on October 8. News of the second nurse’s diagnosis follows criticism of the hospital’s nurses of its initial handling of the diseases. The nurses said the hospital lacked protocols to deal with an Ebola patient, offered no advance training and provided them with insufficient gear, including non-impermeable gowns, gloves with no taping around wrists and suits that left their necks exposed. Basic principles of infection control were violated by both the hospital’s Infectious Disease Department and CDC officials, the nurses said, with no one picking up hazardous waste “as it piled to the ceiling.”
“The nurses strongly feel unsupported, unprepared, lied to, and deserted to handle the situation on their own,” the statement said.
Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said the second infected nurse lived alone and had no pets. He said local health officials moved quickly to clean affected areas and to alert her neighbours. Other residents were concerned enough that they were limiting time spent outdoors.
“Everybody thinks this won’t happen because we are in the United States. But it is happening,” said a woman who lives about a mile from where the first nurse who contracted Ebola resides.
Meanwhile Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, the county’s chief political officer, said authorities were anticipating additional possible Ebola cases.
“We are preparing contingencies for more, and that is a very real possibility,” Jenkins said.