Several schools in Texas and Ohio were closed Thursday out of fear that some students and staff might have come in contact with the second Dallas healthcare worker who tested positive for the virus this week, the Agence France-Presse reported.
Dallas nurse Amber Vinson is currently receiving treatment at Emory University Hospital after she was diagnosed with the deadly disease on Tuesday, the day after she took a Frontier Airlines flight with 131 other people from Cleveland, Ohio, back to Dallas.
Of the passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143, two are students from schools in central Texas, according to AFP. Both schools, North Belton Middle School and Sparta Elementary, were closed Thursday. Belton Early Childhood School was also closed.
It has emerged that Vinson had an elevated fever- a symptom of Ebola- before she boarded the plane Monday evening. Though she notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about her fever, the nurse was not barred from traveling.
Now health officials are backtracking and investigating what the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital nurse did in Cleveland to determine how many people she potentially exposed to a virus that has killed over 4,400 people in West Africa.
"I'm frustrated that we didn't learn until late tonight that the CDC was re-evaluating the health risk," Belton ISD Superintendent Susan Kincannon said Wednesday according to AFP. "The health and safety of our students is my first priority."
Several Ohio schools cancelled classes Thursday, including Solon Middle School, where a teacher might have traveled on the same aircraft Vinson did but on a different Frontier Airlines flight.
Though Vinson had a slight fever while on the flight, health officials say the risk of exposure to other passengers was low because she did not show any other Ebola symptoms, including vomiting. Infection occurs only when someone shows symptoms, experts said, according to NBC News.
But CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said Vinson should not have been flying in the first place.
At least five of Vinson's friends who she met with while in Cleveland have been placed under voluntary quarantine.
Vinson is the second healthcare worker to become infected with Ebola in the U.S. She and the first nurse to contract Ebola, Nina Pham, both became infected after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, the first to die from Ebola in the U.S. after arriving from Liberia. Sierra Leone and Guinea have also been stricken by the virus.
