Health worker with Ebola flew hours before symptoms reported

Frontier Airlines has now taken the Airbus A320 used on the Oct. 13 flight out of service, said Todd Lehmacher, a spokesman for the Denver-based airline. The carrier notified unions representing its workers before issuing a joint statement with the CDC on flights taken by the nurse.

The crew for Flight 1143 has been suspended from duty with pay, Lehmacher said. Two pilots and four flight attendants worked the flight.

“Though there is very little risk to our crewmembers per what the CDC is telling us, we made the decision out of an abundance of caution as we want to ensure both our employees and customers are kept safe,” he said. “Their well- being is our primary concern.”

The Association of Flight Attendants “is working with management and CDC officials to ensure that the health of Frontier flight attendants was not compromised at any point,” said Corey Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the union’s national office. “AFA will continue to press that crew members are regularly monitored and provided with any additional resources that may be required.”

Systemic problem?

Angie Reef, president of the AFA at Frontier, and Mike Haffling, vice president of the Frontier Airline Pilots Association, declined to comment immediately. The unions represent 1,000 flight attendants and about 650 pilots at Frontier.

Asked at a briefing today about the hospital’s performance, Daniel Varga, the chief clinical officer for the hospital group, said “I don’t think we have a systemic institutional problem.”

Some Texas Health Presbyterian workers are included in the 48 people initially being monitored by local health officials after possibly having contact with Duncan before he was isolated, according to Dave Daigle, a Dallas-based CDC spokesman who is part of the Ebola contact-tracing efforts. The new care giver admitted to the hospital wasn’t part of that original group. Daigle declined to give further details on why the health-care worker was allowed to travel or whether other health workers are currently undergoing testing for the virus.

Hospital criticized

U.S. state and local health workers are attempting to combat any spread of Ebola in the U.S. after the hospital where Duncan was treated has been criticized for not having initially done enough to protect the people taking care of him.

National Nurses United, a labor union, said the hospital left Duncan for hours in an area with other patients, supplied safety suits with exposed necks, forcing nurses to use medical tape to cover their skin, played down the need for more protective face masks, and sent Duncan’s lab specimens through the system without being specially sealed.

The latest health worker infected reported a fever yesterday and was immediately isolated at the hospital, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement today. A preliminary Ebola test was run late yesterday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and results were received at about midnight.

–With assistance from Kelly Gilblom in New York and Darrell Preston in Dallas.