The 3rd patient to be diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil is a 29-year-old nurse who worked in close contact with an Ebola patient who died last week.
Nurse Amber Vinson tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday. Her condition is listed as stable but CDC Director Thomas Frieden said she is very ill. Vinson reportedly requested to be flown to Emory Hospital in Atlanta on Wednesday for further treatment.
Vinson, who treated Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, is the 2nd health care worker to test positive for the deadly Ebola infection at Texas Health.
Nurse Nina Pham, 26, was diagnosed with Ebola on Sunday. She was Duncan’s primary nurse.
There is no known cure for Ebola, but other patients have recovered from Ebola after receiving experimental vaccines and antiviral drugs.
Vinson had a temperature of 99.5 when she boarded a flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas on Monday — nearly a week after Duncan died.
All health care workers who came into contact with Duncan were asked to stay home and monitor their temperatures for signs of infection for 21 days. The CDC criticized Vinson for getting on a plane.
“She should not have traveled on a commercial airline,” Frieden said during a press conference on Wednesday.
The CDC is trying to contact 132 passengers who were on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 with Vinson.
“She did not vomit. She was not bleeding,” Frieden said. “So the level of risk of people around her should be extremely low.”
Frieden said health care workers in Dallas who treated Duncan broke strict universal precautions and infection control protocols. But a nurses’ union rep told CNN that the hospital had no infection control protocol in place to handle Ebola.
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