Nurse With Ebola Called CDC Before Flying

Dallas may place health workers in shelters
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 16, 2014 4:16 AM CDT
Updated Oct 16, 2014 7:23 AM CDT
Nurse With Ebola Called CDC Before Flying
The Frontier Airlines plane that Amber Vinson flew from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday rests at a terminal at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.   (AP Photo/Tony Dejak)

The CDC says nurse Amber Vinson shouldn't have flown—but the agency said something different when she called several times before flying back to Texas from Cleveland earlier this week. A health official tells CBS that someone "dropped the ball" by telling the nurse, the second Dallas hospital worker to have contracted Ebola, that she could fly after she called and reported having a temperature of 99.5 degrees, which is below the "high risk" threshold of 100.4 degrees. The CDC is working on a "do not fly" list for people who may have been exposed to Ebola, and officials in Dallas plan "aggressive" containment measures that may include placing health care workers in shelters, reports the Dallas Morning News.

Vinson, described by CDC chief Tom Frieden as "ill but clinically stable," was transferred to Emory Hospital in Atlanta yesterday from Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked and where fellow Ebola patient Nina Pham is still being treated, CNN reports. The 29-year-old, who earned her nursing degree from Kent State University and worked in an Akron hospital until 2012, had returned to Ohio to plan her wedding. The home in an Akron suburb where she stayed for three days has been cordoned off by police, and her stepfather has decided to quarantine himself. "We want to stress that no one here is ill," a police spokesman tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "This is being done as a precautionary measure." (More Amber Vinson stories.)

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