Cruise ship docks after Ebola scare onboard

Cruise ship docks after Ebola scare onboard
By admin


A Carnival cruise ship carrying a lab worker suspected of contact with Ebola has returned to Texas, as US media reported the woman had tested negative for the deadly disease.

The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital lab supervisor and her husband were the first passengers to disembark from the massive cruise ship, and were both screened by CDC doctors, local reporter Larry Seward said on Twitter, citing an executive with Carnival Cruise Lines.

Carnival spokesman Jim Berra told the Los Angeles Times that a helicopter picked up a blood sample on Saturday and the sample tested negative for Ebola.

The cruise company said it was going to aggressively clean and sanitise the vessel before the next trip, though the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention had not said it was necessary, Seward added.

The health worker did not show any symptoms of the disease and voluntarily remained in isolation in her cabin out of "an extreme abundance of caution," Carnival Cruise Lines had said in a previous statement.

But fears she may have been exposed to – and thus contracted – the virus that has killed more than 4500 people in an outbreak centred in West Africa prompted officials in Belize and Mexico to rebuff the massive cruise ship.

It has now been 21 days since the unidentified lab supervisor, who may have handled clinical specimens from Thomas Eric Duncan, has been in the lab with the testing samples.

That is the accepted outer limit for the incubation period for the disease – meaning the time lapse between infection and the onset of symptoms.

Duncan, a Liberian man, was the first Ebola case diagnosed in the United States. He died on October 8.

Two Texas health care workers who treated Duncan have become infected with Ebola and are currently hospitalised in Atlanta, Georgia and Bethesda, Maryland.

Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au

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