Worker Who Treated Late Ebola Patient in Texas Currently on Carnival Cruise: Ship Denied Entrance to Mexico
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that a health care worker who may have handled a specimen from the Ebola patient who died in Texas earlier this month is currently on a seven-day cruise ship around the Caribbean.
Carnival said that it was notified late Wednesday by the CDC that a passenger on the Texas-based Carnival Magic ship supervised a lab in the hospital where Thomas Eric Duncan died from Ebola on Oct. 8. So far, two nurses who treated Duncan at the hospital have also been diagnosed with the disease.
Although the worker is believed to be of low risk of having the deadly disease, the unidentified woman and her husband volunteered to stay in isolation during the remainder of their time on the ship, which can hold up to 4,000 people.
According to Carnival, the worker has not shown any signs of illness.
"At no point in time has the individual exhibited any symptoms or signs of infection, and it has been 19 days since she was in the lab with the testing samples," Carnival said Friday in a statement sent to USA TODAY.
Carnival said that it is 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 employee has been self-monitoring, including daily temperature checks, since Oct. 6, and has not had a fever or demonstrated any symptoms of illness," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement, according to Fox News. "It has been 19 days since the passenger may have processed the since deceased patient's fluid samples."
The Carnival Magic took off from Galveston, Texas, on Oct. 12 and headed to the Western Caribbean. After receiving notice about the lab worker, the cruise was denied access to stop at a port at Cozumel, Mexico, as scheduled on Friday. The ship will return to Galveston on Sunday.
"The Carnival Magic, which was waiting off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico, this morning to dock there for a scheduled port visit, had not received clearance from Mexican authorities to do so by noon eastern time today, and therefore the decision was made to proceed to Galveston to ensure the ship arrives there on time on Sunday morning," read a statement.
As a result, every passenger on board will be reimbursed with $200 and receive a 50 percent discount on a future cruise.
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