Source: USA Today

Several schools in Ohio and Texas canceled classes Thursday over concerns that staff members and some students might have come in contact with a person infected with Ebola.

An e-mail sent to parents in the Solon City School District in Northeast Ohio said they closed Solon Middle and Parkside Elementary schools Thursday after they learned a middle school staff member may have traveled aboard the same airplane, though not on the same flight, as Dallas nurse Amber Joy Vinson.

Vinson, 29, was one of two nurses who contracted Ebola after caring for Thomas Eric Duncan, who got sick and died Oct. 8 from Ebola while visiting Dallas from Liberia. Vinson had returned to the Cleveland area to plan her wedding.

“She was not at football games. She was not at restaurants. She was not at pizza parlors,” Gene Nixon, Summit County health commissioner, said at a press conference. “She was very conscious of what she went through in Dallas.”

But she did go to one store, where health officials tracked down five contacts that now are under voluntary quarantine and daily monitoring for 21 days, he said. They are continuing interviews with family members to determine whether they can remember any other place Vinson might have visited.

Seven people total in the Cleveland area are being quarantined voluntarily. Vinson’s mother, who traveled to Dallas and has no symptoms, also is under quarantine.

In the e-mail, Solon school district officials say they learned about their teacher’s travel late Wednesday. Since then, they have been working with public health officials to determine the best course of action.

The closing of both schools is a precaution to allow both buildings to be disinfected, they said.

“She was a very responsible person,” Dr. Marguerite Erme, medical director of Summit County Public Health, said of Vinson. “She did not take undue risks. She seems to have limited her activity here.”

Vinson arrived in the Cleveland area on Friday and left Monday on a return flight to Dallas. She started showing symptoms Tuesday, Texas health officials have said.

To call Vinson’s 99.5-degree temperature before she took her flight to Dallas a fever is a mischaracterization, Erme said. Though the average normal body temperature is 98.6, normal can vary by the time or day or activity level.

And no one but Vinson has shown any symptoms of Ebola virus disease, which has an incubation period of two to 21 days, the doctor said.

“The contacts do not show symptoms of the disease,” Erme said. “They are not spewing germs out.”

In Belton in Central Texas, three schools were closed Thursday over health concerns surrounding two students who traveled on the Monday flight with Vinson.

Superintendent Susan Kincannon of the Belton Independent School District said in a statement sent to parents Wednesday that the district did not know if health risks to passengers aboard the Frontier Airlines flight included the students.

The two students will stay home for 21 days, the outer limits of the incubation period for the disease, and their health will be monitored on daily.

In Fort Worth, the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District said late Wednesday that a family member of a Lake Pointe Elementary School student also was aboard the same flight as Vinson and that the family would be quarantined for 21 days.

In Shaker Heights, Ohio, officials at Hathaway Brown School informed parents that a student whose houseguest was on the same Oct. 10 Dallas-to-Cleveland flight with Vinson was being kept home from school as a precaution. The student did not have contact with Vinson, said Kathleen Osborne, a school spokeswoman.

In Cleveland, John F. Kennedy High School was thoroughly cleaned and a teacher of freshmen was ordered to stay at home after officials learned that the teacher may have come in contact with a person infected with Ebola. It was not clear whether the person was Vinson, according to a Cleveland Metropolitan School District press release. Parents were notified about the precautions and the school was cleaned with a bleach-based cleaning solution based on CDC guidelines.

The district said no students or staff were at risk, but the precautions were taken to quell concerns “given the nation’s heightened anxiety about the Ebola virus.”

The second Dallas nurse diagnosed with Ebola shouldn’t have traveled on a commercial flight, said CDC director Tom Frieden. But the CDC has now confirmed that it gave Amber Vinson permission to return to Dallas by air after making a trip to Ohio. VPC