Workers disinfected the entrance to the residence of a health worker at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who contracted Ebola in Dallas, Texas this month.
The second US health care worker infected with Ebola flew on a domestic flight a day before her diagnosis, and health authorities say they are seeking to interview 132 people on that flight.
The US Centres for Disease Control said on Wednesday (local time) that the woman "exhibited no signs or symptoms of illness while on flight 1143, according to the crew", but the agency wants to speak with passengers anyway to determine if anyone is at risk.
"Because of the proximity in time between the evening flight and first report of illness the following morning, CDC is reaching out to passengers who flew on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth October 13," the CDC said in a statement.
The nurse has been named as Amber Vinson, a 29-year-old who worked at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, one of her relatives said.
Vinson will be transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta today, Sylvia Burwell, secretary of Health and Human Services, said at a briefing on Wednesday.
The infected health worker flew from her family's home in Ohio to Dallas one day before developing signs of the infection, prompting health officials to try to contact all 132 passengers who were aboard the flight.
US CDC Director Dr Thomas Frieden said he believes the risk to the passengers who shared a Frontier Airlines flight on Monday with a Dallas healthcare worker infected with Ebola are "very low."
Frieden said in a conference call that the nurse had traveled to Ohio before it was known that another nurse at the hospital has become ill with Ebola.
Frieden said the healthcare worker, who was diagnosed with Ebola on Tuesday, had been monitoring herself for symptoms of Ebola and failed to report the fact that her temperature had risen slightly to 99.5 degrees before she departed for Dallas.
Because of that, she "should not have been allowed" to travel on a commercial airline, he said. Even so, Frieden said he believes the risk to passengers is low because she did not vomit on the flight and she was not bleeding.
"We're putting into place extra margins of safety and that is why we are contacting anyone who was on that flight," he said.
Vinson's mother was in Dallas to be near her daughter, who is in isolation.
"Her mother flew to Dallas to be with her," Martha Shuler, the patient's grandmother, told Reuters by telephone from Akron, Ohio.
A check of public records by Reuters showed that Vinson lived at the apartment complex where hazardous materials crews went on Wednesday to decontaminate the home of the latest person infected with Ebola.
The hospital treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who became the first person diagnosed with the disease in the United States. He died a week ago and more than 70 people who cared for him at the hospital are being monitored for signs of infection.
Ebola is transmitted by close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person. It is not contagious until a patient begins to show symptoms such as fever, aches, vomiting or diarrhoea.
The second case of US transmission of Ebola was announced by Dallas officials, and follows the diagnosis on Sunday of nurse Nina Pham.
In Europe, the WHO said the death rate in the outbreak has risen to 70 percent as it has killed nearly 4500 people, most of them in West Africa. The previous mortality rate was about 50 percent.
Officials have said they don't know how the first health worker, a nurse, became infected. But the second case pointed to lapses beyond how one individual may have donned and removed personal protective garb.
"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," the CDC said in a statement.
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"What happened there (in Dallas), regardless of the reason, is not acceptable. It shouldn't have happened," Anthony Fauci, director of the Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of NIH, said on MSNBC.
Dr Tom Frieden, head of the CDC, has acknowledged that the government wasn't aggressive enough in managing Ebola and containing the virus as it spread from an infected patient to a nurse at a Dallas hospital.
"We could've sent a more robust hospital infection control team and been more hands-on with the hospital from day one about exactly how this should be managed," he said.
The stark admission came as the World Health Organization projected the pace of infections accelerating in West Africa to as many as 10,000 new cases a week within two months.
The second case may help health officials determine where the infection control breach is occurring and make practices safer for health workers everywhere. For example, if both health workers were involved in drawing Duncan's blood, placing an intravenous line or suctioning mucus when Duncan was on a breathing machine, that would be recognised as a particularly high-risk activity. It also might reveal which body fluids pose the greatest risk.
The CDC was conducting confirmatory testing of a preliminary Ebola test conducted late Tuesday at a state public health laboratory in Texas, which came back positive.
Emergency responders in hazardous materials suits began decontamination work before dawn Wednesday at the Dallas apartment complex where the second hospital worker lives. Officials said she lives alone with no pets.
Dallas city spokeswoman Sana Syed said a hazardous materials crew has finished cleaning common areas of the complex and that the state was sending a crew to clean the actual apartment.
In a conference call late on Tuesday, the nation's largest nurses' union described how the patient, Duncan, was left in an open area of the emergency room for hours. National Nurses United, citing unidentified nurses, said staff treated Duncan for days without the correct protective gear, that hazardous waste was allowed to pile up to the ceiling and safety protocols constantly changed.
A total of 76 people at the hospital might have been exposed to Duncan, and all are being monitored for fever and other symptoms daily, Frieden said. Pham contracted the virus while caring for Duncan. Health officials are monitoring 48 others who had some contact with Duncan before he was admitted the hospital where he died.
Pham, 26, became the first person to contract the disease on US soil as she cared for Duncan. She released a statement on Tuesday through Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital saying she was "doing well," and the hospital listed her in good condition. She has received a plasma transfusion from a doctor who recovered from the virus, and the hospital CEO said medical staff members remain hopeful about her condition.
Pham was in Duncan's room often, from the day he was placed in intensive care until the day before he died.
Among the changes announced by Frieden was a plan to limit the number of health care workers who care for Ebola patients so they "can become more familiar and more systematic in how they put on and take off protective equipment, and they can become more comfortable in a healthy way with providing care in the isolation unit."
Article originally from www.stuff.co.nz
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