No Sign of Ebola Among Nurse’s Ohio Contacts, Officials Say

None of the individuals who may have come into contact with an Ebola-infected nurse in Ohio is showing signs of illness, health officials said today.

Sixteen contacts in Ohio have been identified as of last night, and one is under quarantine, Mary DiOrio of the Ohio Department of Health said at a press conference in Akron. While they are being monitored and checked daily, all are currently healthy and showing no sign of the deadly sickness, DiOrio said.

“I don’t think that we are going to have an outbreak here,” Christopher Braden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s division of foodborne, waterborne and environmental diseases, said at the press conference. “This is going to come under wraps. I’m very confident of that.”

Amber Vinson, a Dallas nurse, helped care for Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas. He died Oct. 8. Two days later, she flew to Cleveland. She returned to Dallas Oct. 13, the night before she went to the hospital with a fever.

Braden said that while Vinson was being monitored, she was allowed to travel because she had worn protective equipment while caring for Duncan and so at the time she wasn’t considered to have been exposed to the virus. That policy has changed, and the travel of health-care workers treating Ebola patients now is being limited, he said.

Feeling ‘Funny’

Other than feeling “funny,” Vinson didn’t have typical symptoms of Ebola while in Ohio, Braden said. Officials still can’t rule out that she was ill while in the state, he said.

Health officials are trying to contact those aboard a Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport Oct. 10 and the Texas-bound return trip Oct. 13. Vinson visited Coming Attractions Bridal & Formal in Akron on Oct. 11, and officials also are asking anyone who was at the shop from noon to 3:30 p.m. to call the county to speak with an investigator.

Frontier directly contacted 132 people on the flight from Cleveland to Dallas, said Todd Lehmacher, a spokesman for the Denver-based carrier. The CDC then asked the airline to e-mail 903 more passengers who were on either the flight to Cleveland from Dallas or five more flights that plane made Oct. 14, telling them to contact CDC or their state health officials with any concerns, he said.

Discount Offer

The airline offered via e-mail a 20 percent discount good for today “to encourage customers to continue to book Frontier and to thank them for their support during a time of heightened media attention,” Lehmacher said. The e-mails went to customers on the airline’s regular distribution list, he said.

The craft used on the flight from Cleveland to Dallas is out of service indefinitely, Lehmacher said. The plane has been cleaned four times and was used last night to ferry employees and company leadership to Newark, New Jersey, and then back to Denver, he said.

Cleveland Hopkins International Airport said in a statement that it has implemented infectious disease protocols, providing employees with personal protection equipment and disinfecting “key areas” of the airport.

There are no confirmed cases of the virus in Summit County, which encompasses Akron, said Margo Erme, medical director of Summit County Public Health. The department isn’t advocating closing schools or canceling public events, she said.

School Cleaning

Some facilities aren’t taking any chances.

An Akron elementary school will remain shut until Oct. 20, the district’s superintendent said. North Canton City Schools near Akron plans to sanitize areas of Hoover High School after learning that a staff member flew from Dallas to Cleveland the day after Vinson traveled and may have used the same aircraft, the district said in a release on its website. The employee has been cleared to return to work, the district said.

“Despite the low risk of transmission of the virus to our staff member, we are still taking the precaution of cleaning and sanitizing all areas of the school that this staff member came into contact with,” the district said.

Vinson’s condition is “stable,” according to a statement from her uncle, Lawrence Vinson, that was released through Kent State University, where three of her relatives, including her mother, work.

“Amber is a respected professional and has always had a strong passion for nursing,” according to the statement. “She followed all of the protocols necessary when treating a patient in Dallas, and right now, she’s trusting in her doctors and nurses as she is now the patient.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Niquette in Columbus at mniquette@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net Mark Tannenbaum