75 Dallas Health Care Workers Banned From Public Transportation, Put On No-Fly List

According to KERA TV news, a Dallas PBS station, 75 health care workers have been asked to sign legal documents in which they agree to stay home, not ride public transportation, and not go to public places.

A local CBS affiliate claims they were also placed on a no-fly list.

The documents ask 75 health care workers to agree not to go to public places or use mass transit. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins says the agreements are binding legal documents that can be enforced with a variety of remedies, though he declined to elaborate to the Associated Press.

WFAA reports that Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins has confirmed that 75 employees who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital were put on the no-fly list.  The workers reportedly had contact with the Ebola patient.

In a Texas Department of State Health Services memo obtained by KXAS-TV, the state mandate says that “no individual who entered the first Ebola patient’s room can travel by commercial transportation until 21 days after that individual’s last exposure.”

It continues: “These individuals should not travel by commercial conveyances (e.g. airplane, ship, long-distance bus, or train). Local use of public transportation (e.g. taxi, bus) by asymptomatic individuals should be discussed with the public health authority.”

On Thursday, Nina Pham, the first nurse to contract Ebola in the U.S., boarded a CDC plane at Dallas Love Field to Frederick, Maryland.  She is to be treated at the National Institutes of Health.  The plane departed at 7:09 p.m. CT and arrived at an airport at Frederick less than three hours later.

She walked off the plane in Maryland with assistance while wearing a protective suit. She climbed into an ambulance for transport to the National Institutes of Health’s state-of-the-art facility in Bethesda, Md.

Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has reported that she is in good condition.

Pham, who said “I’m doing really well,” left Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in an ambulance.  Friends and coworkers told her goodbye.