COGal

“The symptoms of one individual were found to be consistent with another, minor treatable condition unrelated to Ebola. The second individual, who was traveling with the patient, was asymptomatic,” University Hospital said in a statement, adding that both would be released “with continued monitoring.”

Translation -- They ate the airline food.

mike1968

The difference being that HIV has a very short life once outside the body.
Ebola is present and infectious for way longer in a significantly wider range of fluids such as vomiting , sweat from fever, etc. and has a life span once it exits the body. This is why quarantine is critical and part of the problem in Africa where there are, depending on culture, some elaborate pre burial washing rituals that bring relatives in contact with a deceased, yet still infectious, victim and perpetuates the spread of the virus.


all this to say I would be significantly more concerned with a person sweating profusely due to fever or vomiting on a plane suspected of having Ebola than someone being HIV+ and vomiting on a plane due to having a stomach or other flu.

Ysitincoach

“We were told it was nothing infectious,” said Tomida.

“The message they gave us was it wasn’t contagious,” said passenger Wells.

...Oh that's good, just saved $misek a bill on a cleaning crew.

Glad there were no photos allowed...at that point I'm pulling out every camera I own in the hopes they expedite my departure from the cabin.

BearX220

If you've followed the stories here of UA cabin crew going berserk when customers take innocent photos of things like their IFE screen, throwing them off the aircraft before departure, etc., you might think twice about that tactic. You could be arrested.

azzurro

Good clarification. I could see that issue being dangerous when occurring in the confined space of an airplane that is not routinely cleaned well.

l etoile

There was at least one photo from a passenger posted to Twitter of gloved immigration agents on the plane. One paper posted it.

Shareholder

I would have expected a CDC person/team is now posted at every US gateway airport where flights from BRU arrive (i.e. UA at EWR, SN at IAD) since BRU is a major connecting point for flights from central Africa, and passengers onward would be boarding flights there to NAmerica. Otherwise, there are few nonstop flights from/to African cities at JFK (SA from JNB), ATL (DL from JNB), IAH (UA from Lagos) and IAD (SA from JNB). Don't know if US gateway airports are now also deploying heat image detectors to screen arriving international passengers, as we find at most Asian airports. This should be simple enough to institute, though certainly not foolproof.

denuaflier

CDC has stations at 30 US airports.

Indelaware

It seemed strange to me for CDC to have staff, under normal circumstances, at any US airport. I would have thought that the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) itself or the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (USPHSCC) be the better presence?

In any event, on further investigation and notwithstanding denuaflier's comment, according to CDC's website, they have staff at 20 borders (mixed between airports and land) - not thirty airports.

http://www.cdc.gov/vhf/ebola/outbrea...africa/qa.html

zombietooth

Remnant fecal matter on improperly/incompletely washed hands can be transferred easily to anything that the infected person touches.

Remember the incident where SARS infected over 300 residents of one apartment complex(the Amoy Gardens) in Hong Kong in 2003? See here:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/...who-sars_x.htm

They later found that the primary modes of transmission at this apartment complex were not via the expected aerosol (airborne) routes but through direct contact with remnant fecal matter/bodily fluids on elevator buttons and other surfaces.

One of the first symptoms of Ebola is a loose stool. At that point, a person is definitely infectious and carrying a huge viral load, and must meticulously clean their hands to prevent the spread of active virus into the external environment.

Hopefully, Ebola can't survive for 4 days like SARS outside of a host, but the testing on that has only just begun.

mw94044

If I were a passenger on that flight, I'd curse at my luck for boarding on that specific flight. Not only would I not arrive on time, but I'd have to risk getting infected because CDC says I have to stay inside a plane within close proximity to possibly infectious Ebola material.

Aren't there better protocols than just telling passengers "Stay inside the plane until we're sure"?

WineCountryUA

As the situation has been resolved and general Ebola discussion is best elsewhere, I will close this thread.

WineCountryUA
UA coModerator