Man on Amber Vinson's flight questions Ebola quarantine for himself

I-Team Investigation

Chuck Goudie Image
Friday, October 17, 2014
Ebola questions arise as patient transported to Atlanta facility
The first Texas nurse to contract Ebola has been moved from Dallas to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland Thursday night.

CHICAGO (WLS) -- As the two Texas nurses diagnosed with Ebola are moved to isolation units, a man on the same flight as Amber Vinson questions if he should be in quarantine after sharing the same space as she was becoming ill.

Nina Pham, the first Texas nurse to contract Ebola, has been moved from Dallas to the National Institutes of Health in Maryland Thursday night. The facility has one of four isolation units in the United States.

The Ebola toll in the United States hasn't changed in several days: One man dead and two nurses, Pham and Amber Vinson, infected with the disease. The spread of Ebola to the nurses who cared for the patient leads to questions: How was the patient treated? How were the nurses exposed? And why was Vinson allowed to travel?

The I-Team has obtained video from onboard the Frontier jetliner that carried Vinson and 132 others. For the first time, a passenger who was on that plane says he is taking precautions.

"If she was showing symptoms, if she was contagious on that flight and I was in an enclosed space with her for three hours, then that is enough of a reason for me to say I should be isolated and I should be quarantined," said Axl Goode.

Federal health officials first claimed nurse Vinson made a mistake by traveling.

"She should not have been on that plane," said Dr. Thomas Frieden.

Now Centers for Disease Control officials admit they told her it was OK to fly because her temperature was less than the 100.4 threshold for fever. Thursday night, though, the CDC says she was feeling ill days earlier on a flight to Cleveland, and now passengers on that plane are being contacted.

Vinson is in stable condition at Emory University in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, video of Pham, who was moved to a bio-containment unit in Maryland, was recorded speaking with one of her Texas doctors.



The I-Team obtained a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General report. Largely overlooked when it was released in August, it concluded that DHS officials had no strategy to deal with an epidemic and found that stockpiles of federal medical supplies were substandard or expired.

Homeland Security disputed much of that report as misleading. Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas is also fighting back-they first misdiagnosed Ebola victim Thomas Duncan and sent him home. In a statement tonight the hospital criticizes media reports as out of context and sensationalized or completely inaccurate.

Hospital officials claim they have followed all CDC protocols.