Ebola: 132 under radar as 2nd US nurse tests positive
LATEST CASE INVOLVES A HOSPITAL STAFFER WHO CAME DOWN WITH A FEVER ON TUESDAY AND WAS ISOLATED AT TEXAS HOSPITAL CENTRE
WASHINGTON: A nurse newly diagnosed in Dallas with Ebola took a flight from Cleveland the day before she showed symptoms, US health officials have confirmed.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is seeking to interview 132 passengers who flew on Frontier flight 1143 on October 13.
The nurse, the second to contract the disease in the US, reported symptoms of Ebola on October 14.
The health care worker was part of the team that worked on the Liberian man, Duncan E Smith, who died in that hospital last week. Nina Pham, a nurse from the same team, became the first case of transmission of the dreaded disease on American soil — Smith was infected in Monrovia, Liberia. Both care providers had taken all precautions laid down by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that has puzzled, and angered, health officials and workers. “We are looking at every element of our personal protection equipment and infection control in the hospital,” Dr Daniel Varga of Texas Health Resources, which oversees the health where these cases are being treated, told The New York Times.
The outbreak has claimed 4,024 lives worldwide, according to WHO, with the number of reported cases put at 8,376 yet most of them in Sierra Leone Guinea and Liberia.
“Ebola got a head start on us,” Anthony Banbury, head of the UN mission on Ebola, told the Security Council in a briefing through video link on Tuesday
Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama abruptly post poned a political trip he was to make on Wednesday to stay at the White House to convene a high-level meeting about the Ebola outbreak.
The White House said Obama’s trip to New Jersey and Connecticut has been postponed
“Later this afternoon, the president will convene a meeting at the White House of his team coordinating the government’s response to the Ebola outbreak,” spokesman Josh Earnest said.