Texas health officials have ordered any person who entered the room of the first diagnosed Ebola patient at Dallas hospital not to travel or leave the state. The persons are not to travel using public transport or other public means such as rail or flight or visit groceries or restaurants or theaters for 21 days.
The Texas Department of State Health Service late Thursday made the order against 70 health workers involved in the preliminary providence of care for Thomas Duncan. The state officials made the order in an attempt to curb the Ebola crises' spread in the nation.
The Texas order against public travel and public interactions was made after one of the nurses who treated Duncan, 29 year old Amber Vinson, flew to Cleveland after treating Duncan, and later took a return flight on October 1, using the Frontier Airlines, despite having a low grade fever.
Vinson later tested positive for Ebola on Tuesday and was hospitalized in Dallas before being transferred to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. A similar occurrence happened with a different nurse, Nina Pham, 26, who tested positive for the virus after treating an infected individual. She has since been transferred to the National Institute of health Hospital in Bethesda.
Before the Thursday ban on public transport, the health workers had only been required to conduct multiple self monitoring experiments for symptoms of the infection. This was after two of the Duncan nurses were diagnosed with the virus. Other hospital workers had been ordered to undergo a twice a day screening, also including one face to face encounter.
The order has been signed by David Leakey, commissioner of the State Health Department.
After the news of Vinson's visit broke, eight persons in north east Ohio, Cleveland, reported to be family members of Vinson have been quarantined, to ensure the threat of the spreading Ebola virus is curbed.
