A health worker from the Dallas hospital that diagnosed the first U.S. case of Ebola has voluntarily been isolated aboard a Carnival Corp. cruise ship.
The worker, a lab supervisor at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, hasn’t exhibited any Ebola symptoms since she boarded the Carnival Magic bound for the Caribbean on Oct. 12 in Galveston, Texas, the company said today in an e-mailed statement.
While the worker didn’t have direct contact with the deceased Ebola patient and is in good health, she may have had contact with clinical specimens collected from the patient, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.
The cruise industry is increasing scrutiny of passengers, denying boarding to guests and crew from countries for which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued travel warnings. Ship operators also have begun “contact screening,” questioning boarding passengers to determine who may have come in contact with an Ebola patient, the Cruise Lines International Association trade group said in a statement.
Thomas Eric Duncan died Oct. 8 at Texas Health Presbyterian. Since then, two nurses who helped care for him have tested positive for the virus, one after flying from Dallas to Cleveland and back on a Frontier Airlines jet.
Carnival was told by federal authorities on Oct. 15 that the health worker was aboard its ship. The Miami-based cruise line operator said it’s in “close contact with the CDC and at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board.”
The health worker has been self-monitoring, including conducting daily temperature checks, since Oct. 6, and hasn’t had a fever or demonstrated any symptoms of illness. She was out of the country before being notified of CDC’s updated requirements for active monitoring. The ship is scheduled to return to Texas on Oct. 19.
It’s been 19 days since the passenger may have processed the patient’s fluid samples. Workers at the hospital who cared for Duncan have been asked to self-monitor their conditions for 21 days from their last possible exposure. The virus spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids such as blood, saliva and urine of an infected person.
The cruise ship’s doctor has monitored the lab worker and confirmed she is in good health. The State Department is working with Carnival to safely bring the hospital employee and a traveling partner back to the U.S. “out of an abundance of caution.”
The Carnival Magic was scheduled to dock today in Cozumel, Mexico, yet didn’t receive approval to do so from local authorities, the company said in a statement. The ship left that port and now is heading to Galveston. Guests on the Magic are being provided $200 of credit to their shipboard accounts and a 50 percent discount on future cruises, the company said.