A second health care worker, infected with the Ebola virus, traveled on a commercial airline one day before, officials said.
Amber Joy Vinson, a 29 year-old nurse, who works at the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital in Dallas, became infected with Ebola while treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a patient from Liberia who later died.
“Right now she’s doing OK. Her temperature is going down. We don’t want to do a lot of talking about it now,” Vinson’s stepfather said, The Daily Mail reported.
According to reports, Vinson flew to Cleveland, her home, on Friday and returned to Dallas on Monday, one day before she reported a fever.
Vinson flew on Frontier Airlines Flight #1143. Now, authorities are trying to track down everyone who took the same flight as she did.
Health officials said Wednesday, Vinson will be flown to Emory University hospital in Atlanta for treatment.
Nina Pham, 26, the first person to contract Ebola in the U.S. and who also treated Duncan said Tuesday, she was “doing well.”
Pham was reported in good condition on Tuesday evening, according to Wendell Watson, a spokesman for Texas Health Resources.
Meanwhile, the National Nurses United, the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in the U.S., blasted the hospital saying, the “guidelines [at Texas Health Presbyterian] were constantly changing” and “there were no protocols” about how to deal with the deadly virus.
The NNU also said while nurses wore protective gear, their necks were exposed, they received “no hands-on training” and there was “no one picked up hazardous waste as it piled to the ceiling,” when Duncan was being treated.
