Staff in Texas Ebola Case Is Asked to Avoid Public Spaces

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Fri, 2014-10-17 18:33 — mike kraft

NEW YORK TIMES

By MANNY FERNANDEZ OCT. 17, 2014

DALLAS — No restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters or other places where members of the public congregate. No travel by airplane, ship, long-distance bus, train or other modes of commercial transportation.

Such are the restrictions that dpzens of health care workers who treated the Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan are being asked to follow for the 21-day maximim incubation period of the virus.

The documents were drawn up by the Texas state health agency and Dallas County officials after an infected nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, took two flights between Dallas and Cleveland in the days before she developed symptoms of Ebola and was diagnosed with the disease.

County Judge Clay Jenkins, Dallas County’s chief executive and its director of homeland security and emergency management, said he was confident that all of the workers would agree to sign the documents. “These are hometown health care heroes,” he said. “They want to do this. They’re going to follow these agreements.”

Still, officials said, anyone who does not adhere to the measures could face a state-ordered quarantine.