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New Texas nurse with Ebola had slight fever on airliner

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REUTERS                                                          Wed Oct 15, 2014 5:10pm EDT

By Lisa Maria Garza and Terry Wade 

DALLAS  A second Texas nurse who had contracted Ebola flew on a commercial flight from Ohio to Texas with a slight temperature the day before she was diagnosed, health officials said on Wednesday, raising new concerns about U.S. efforts to control the disease.

Chances that other passengers on the plane were infected were very low, but the nurse should not have been traveling on the flight, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.

The woman, Amber Vinson, 29, was isolated immediately after reporting a fever on Tuesday, Texas Department of State Health Services officials said. She had treated Liberian patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of Ebola and was the first patient diagnosed with the virus in the United States.

Vinson, a worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, had taken a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport on Monday, officials said.

"The patient had traveled to Ohio before it was known that the first healthcare worker was ill," Frieden said. "At that point, that patient as well as the rest of the healthcare team were undergoing self-monitoring."

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http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/us-health-ebola-usa-idUSKCN0I40UE20141015

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