Yahoo News – by Jason SicklesDALLAS – A second nurse who treated Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan has been diagnosed with the deadly disease a day after flying from Ohio to Texas, officials said.
The nurse, identifed by her family as Amber Joy Vinson, 29, reported a fever on Tuesday and was immediately isolated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, officials said.
The CDC said Vinson was not experiencing symptoms at the time of her flight, but is asking all 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth which landed at 8:16 p.m. Monday to call 1-800-CDC-INFO.
“After 1 p.m. E.T., public health professionals will begin interviewing passengers about the flight, answering their questions, and arranging follow up,” the CDC said in a statement. “Individuals who are determined to be at any potential risk will be actively monitored.”
Vinson was among 76 hospital workers who cared for Duncan, a Liberian citizen who died from Ebola at Texas Health Presbyterian a week ago.
At an early morning news conference, a bleary eyed Dr. Daniel Varga, the hospital’s chief clinical officer, called Vinson’s inefection “an unprecedented crisis.”
“This is a heroic person, a person who has dedicated her life to helping others and is a servant leader,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said during a news conference.
Jenkins called the second diagnosis a “gut shot” to the hospital staff. He acknowledged that officials are making contingency plans and that others who treated Duncan may develop Ebola as well.
“That is a very real possibility,” he said.
It wasn’t immediately known how the Vinson contracted the disease, but Varga said, “It’s clear there was an exposure somewhere, sometime in their treatment of Mr. Duncan.”
“We’re a hospital that may have done some things different with the benefit of what we know today,” he said. “Make no mistake, no one wants to get this right more than our hospital.”
The latest positive test for Ebola was determined at about midnight Tuesday at a state laboratory in Austin.
A hazardous-materials team is now decontaminating Vinson’s Dallas apartment in a community not far from the hospital. City officials said she lived alone and had no pets.
Vinson, a nurse in Texas for two years according to state records, was reportedly in Ohio visiting family near Akron. She arrived in Cleveland last Saturday on Frontier flight 1142, according to the airline.
Vinson becomes the third person to be diagnosed with Ebola in Dallas since Sept. 30. City officials addressed the public early Wednesday.
“I continue to believe that while Dallas is anxious about this — and, with this news this morning, the anxiety level goes up a level — we are not fearful,” Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said. “It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better.”
Duncan, who had travelled from West Africa to Dallas days before becoming ill, was the first person to ever be diagnosed with the virus in the United States. The disease, for which there is no known cure, has killed more than 4,000 people in West Africa in 2014, the World Health Organization estimates.
Duncan, 42, was treated at Texas Health Presbyterian for 10 days before his death. Last Friday, 26-year-old nurse Nina Pham began running a fever while at home and went to the hospital, where she was isolated. She tested positive for Ebola on Sunday. Hospital officials reported that she was in good condition as of late Tuesday.
Texas Health Presbyterian officials have said Pham wore protective clothing and insist that staff followed safety precautions issued by federal officials. How Pham, a nurse for four years, contracted Ebola hasn’t been determined, but CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden has said he believes there was a breach in safety procedures.
Pham’s diagnosis sparked immediate concern for workers at Texas Health Presbyterian. On Tuesday, the CDC said 76 health care workers who could have come in contact with Duncan were being monitored for symptoms.
“As we have said before, because of our ongoing investigation, it is not unexpected that there would be additional exposures,” the CDC said in a written statement early Wednesday. “An additional health care worker testing positive for Ebola is a serious concern, and the CDC has already taken active steps to minimize the risk to health care workers and the patient.”
News of the third Ebola infection comes a day after the largest U.S. nurses’ union alleged that some Texas Health Presbyterian workers had reported that nurses treated Duncan for days without proper protective gear and faced constantly changing protocols.
RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of Nurses United, said the allegations came from “several” and “a few” nurses, but she refused repeated inquiries to state how many, the Associated Press reported. She said that the organization had vetted the claims and that the nurses cited were in a position to know what had occurred at the hospital. She refused to elaborate.
A hospital spokesman did not respond to specific claims by the nurses but said the hospital has not received similar complaints.
Jason Sickles is a reporter for Yahoo. Follow him on Twitter (@jasonsickles).
http://news.yahoo.com/ebola-diagnosed-in-second-dallas-nurse-105542930.html
Interesting how these stories just keep coming out as the Stock Market continues to takes a dive.
And MarketWatch.com says:
“We are experiencing technical difficulties
The full MarketWatch site will return shortly.”
Interesting times we are living in.
. . .
Interesting, also, the timing of this right AFTER a holiday weekend when many people would be traveling. One would think that healthcare professionals and authorities interested in stopping something as serious as Ebola is purported to be, would go beyond “self monitoring” of the 50 or so healthcare workers who had close contact with Mr. Duncan. One would think that if, as reported, the healthcare workers only donned the protective gear once he was formally diagnosed with Ebola (and not during the 2 days he was at the hospital awaiting formal diagnosis), that they might sound the alarm and encroach on their employees’ rights to move about the community and country freely. That is, if this were a real, contagious disease. One might think an abundance of caution might prevail. Instead of this after-the-fact “oops.” I’m not buying it anymore, that people are that incompetent.
Yes, interesting times.
All of the Cleveland TV stations have interrupted their regular programming.
Apparently she was in contact with Kent State students in Akron.
This is bio warfare being perpetrated upon the American people. Watch for the elite to go underground soon. Obola will sell nuclear cleansing as a way to rid the states of the disease. “It’s for your safety”.
When they come for the guns they will be able to pick them up from the corpses.
wow
that’s BEYOND ludicrous.
Read they’ve issued over 14,000 visas for people traveling from West Africa……Obola and Team Dark are spreading the virus and Texas was picked as teh first one because if they can declare martial law there and do their long sought after gun grab then they know the rest of the country will be a push over. Mandatory vaccine ( the mark of the beast), gun grab, martial law….you know Obola is just one happy little luciferian right now, looks like all his dreams will be coming true…third term? Why not…
I was at work today and two managers were talking about this Ebola thing. The younger one (who is in her late 20’s) was all frustrated and asking the older one (who is in his 40’s),
“I just don’t understand it. The information that the media is giving just doesn’t make any sense. I’m trying to understand it, but they keep changing the information. Why do some people wear hazmat suits while others don’t and some people are getting Ebola while others aren’t? And why are they not doing more to stop it if it is so lethal? And why are some of them transporting people without gloves knowing that they are contagious while others are wearing gloves and they wonder why it keeps spreading? I just don’t get it.”
The older manager said, “It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s fear-mongering. It’s all a show. We don’t know what is happening. They may have a virus or they may not but we all know to never get our information from MSM news like Fox and CNN.”
I just told the younger manager, “It’s not supposed to make sense because it’s all a hoax. There is no Ebola. Have you seen any proof? It’s all baloney.”
Apparently, some people don’t understand deductive reasoning anymore. As the character Sherlock Holmes often states:
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?
Then a 19 year old co-worker of mine said, “It’s not spreading as fast because it’s not airborne and there are different strands.”
The older manager and I just looked at him and said, “Hey watch this. Achoo! Hey, it’s airborne”. He shut up then.
Then we were talking about the whole thing having partly to do with selling Ebola vaccines. Well, apparently, my co-worker does not believe that flu vaccines or vaccines themselves will give you other diseases but he does know that the vaccine is a small part of the virus and says that he takes a flu shot all the time and he is fine. I told him, he is one of the few that are lucky. He just laughed at me and said I was crazy for thinking thinking that and asked me for proof. I told him to look online and that it’s all over the net. He said, “Where? Show me.” I said, “Ok, I’ll give you a whole bunch of websites”. He then said, “I don’t have time to look at that. What you’re saying just makes no sense whatsoever.” What can I say? Living in denial much? To be young and naive. That’s all I have to say.
So basically in Dallas, many people know what’s really going on, while the younger are still slightly living in denial or are still struggling to free themselves from the matrix.
Gee, I wonder where this is all going…
http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/human-trials-set-to-begin-for-ebola-vaccine-what-does-that-mean/108023#comment-760713
Be the first in your neighborhood to volunteer.
Oh! Pick me! Pick ME!!! 🙄
O.K., may as well, NC.
The entire Dallas area MUST be infected by now anyway, right?