Three Pennsylvanians who were on a flight from Cleveland to Dallas with a nurse who tested positive for Ebola are in Texas and have not been back home since the trip, Gov. Tom Corbett and other health officials said Friday.
The three people are not showing symptoms of Ebola and are not being quarantined, Corbett said. Their risk of contracting Ebola is very low, the governor said.
Corbett said the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had interviewed the three people and they are free to travel until they start showing symptoms, although state health officials said they are not allowed to travel on a commercial flight for a total of 21 days — the incubation period of the virus — after the Monday trip.
"Should they decide to return to Pennsylvania, we are going to look and see what we can do to get them back here safely into Pennsylvania so that we can continue to monitor them very closely," Corbett said.
The three are being asked to self-monitor their symptoms, including taking their temperature two times a day, and state epidemiologists are staying in daily contact, state health officials said.
State officials are not disclosing personal information about them, other than saying they are from the northwestern Pennsylvania.
Corbett's health secretary, Michael Wolf, said there are no other Pennsylvanians being monitored by the state.
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His agency is assembling an inventory of hospital equipment that could be marshaled to respond in case of a suspected Ebola case in Pennsylvania, and it has given hospitals protocol for responding to a potential case of Ebola, as well as procedures for isolation and quarantine, he said.
