The CDC announced today that it's seeking to contact all of the people who flew with Amber Vinson on Monday. "CDC is asking all 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines flight 1143 Cleveland to Dallas/Fort Worth on October 13 (the flight route was Cleveland to Dallas Fort Worth and landed at 8:16 p.m. CT) to call 1 800-CDC INFO (1 800 232-4636). After 1 p.m. ET, public health professionals will begin interviewing passengers about the flight, answering their questions, and arranging follow up. Individuals who are determined to be at any potential risk will be actively monitored."
The agency said that, according to the flight crew, Vinson did not exhibit signs or symptoms of Ebola on the flight. And it said Frontier is working closely with CDC to identify and notify the passengers.
Meanwhile, Frontier said it was placing the two pilots and four flight attendants from the flight on paid leave, “out of an abundance of caution.” The airline said that, although the plane was properly cleaned after the Dallas flight, it took five more trips before Frontier was notified that it had been carrying an Ebola patient.
Nurse asked CDC for permission to fly
The Dallas nurse who flew with a fever from Cleveland to Dallas on Monday – she was returning from a trip to Ohio to plan her wedding – told the CDC official monitoring her health that she had a slightly elevated temperature, 99.5, before she took the flight. But Amber Vinson was given clearance to board the plane, an agency spokesman told the Associated Press. Her fever was below the threshold of 100.4 degrees set by the agency and she had no symptoms, the AP said. It attributed the information to CDC spokesman David Daigle. The nurse had close contact with the now-deceased Ebola patient Thomas Duncan, inserting catheters, taking blood samples and disposing of bodily fluids, and became symptomatic herself this week.
Schools close in two states
A handful of schools in Texas and Ohio closed today because some of their students were aboard the same plane. The New York Daily News began referring to the flight and its fallout as an “Amber alert.”
