Latest Ebola Patient Traveled by Plane, CDC Says

_{Editor’s note: This story has been updated throughout.}

A second health care worker in Dallas who tested positive for the Ebola virus will be transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, federal officials said Wednesday in a conference call.

Tom Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, added that the Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas worker, who traveled by plane one day before reporting symptoms on Tuesday, violated CDC guidelines.

“She should not have traveled on a commercial airline,” said Frieden, who did not give details on how the guidelines were being enforced but said the care worker had been “self-monitoring.”

Amid news of the second health care worker’s infection, Gov. Rick Perry’s office confirmed Wednesday that the governor would cut an economic development trip to Europe short this week to return to Texas.

The first hospital worker to test positive for Ebola, nurse Nina Pham, was listed in good condition on Tuesday, and she released a statement saying she was doing well. Officials did not give details on the second worker’s condition or say why that worker was being transferred.

In a statement, a Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas spokesman said the hospital “is actively consulting with Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and other health officials about the possibility of transferring to Emory our second coworker being treated for Ebola.”

The other 75 health care workers who had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, will not be allowed to fly, Frieden added.

The federal public health agency said it is contacting all 132 passengers on the health care worker’s evening flight from Cleveland to Dallas. In a statement, Frontier Airlines said the patient “exhibited no symptoms or sign of illness while on flight 1143, according to the crew,” and that it had removed the aircraft from service.

“The diagnosis of a second health care worker in Dallas reaffirms what a formidable foe this virus is,” Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement before his office confirmed he was coming back to Texas on Thursday.

Before his announcement, state Sen. Wendy Davis, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, had called on Perry to cancel his ongoing trip.

“I do think he should come back to Texas and be our governor and do his job,” Davis said during a campaign event in Austin.

The White House announced Wednesday that President Obama had canceled a trip to New Jersey and Connecticut so he could convene a meeting with his Cabinet to coordinate a response to Ebola.

The worker had provided care for Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. Duncan died Oct. 8 of the disease.

That another health care worker has become infected is a “serious concern,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an earlier statement Wednesday. But the agency stressed it had “already taken active steps to minimize the risk to health care workers and the patient.”

During a press conference early Wednesday, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said officials were working to decontaminate the second health worker’s apartment complex.

“It may get worse before it gets better, but it will get better,” Rawlings said of the new case.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has come under scrutiny for its handling of the Ebola cases. Federal health officials have said a breach of protocol led to the health care workers’ infections. But Dr. Daniel Varga, chief clinical officer and senior executive vice president of the hospital’s parent organization, Texas Health Resources, defended the response.

“I don’t think we have a systematic institutional problem,” he said at the press conference.

On Tuesday, CDC officials told reporters that they were monitoring at least 75 other health care workers who might have come in contact with Duncan while he was hospitalized. People who may have come into contact with the second worker will also be monitored, state health officials said.

The second worker tested positive for Ebola in a preliminary test at a state laboratory, and a test to confirm the diagnosis will be done at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Ebola is spread through “direct contact with bodily fluids of a sick person or exposure to contaminated objects such as needles,” the state health department’s website says. “People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.”

Duncan had traveled to Dallas from Liberia and was admitted to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas on Sept. 28 after he was diagnosed with the virus. He was initially sent home from an earlier trip to the hospital on Sept. 26, despite telling hospital staff that he had traveled from Africa.

Alexa Ura, Jay Root and Corrie MacLaggan contributed reporting.

This story was produced in partnership with Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan health policy research and communication organization not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.