Ebola scare on Caribbean cruise ship: US health worker quarantined in cabin after coming into contact with infected specimen from ‘patient zero’ at Texas hospital

A Dallas health care worker who handled a lab specimen from a Liberian man who died from Ebola is self-quarantined on a Caribbean cruise ship and is being monitored for infection, the White House confirmed on Friday.

The woman, an employee of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, had shown no signs of the disease and has been asymptomatic for 19 days, an Obama administration spokesman said.

The government is working to return the woman and her husband to the U.S. before the ship, the Carnival Magic, completes its cruise. The State Department was working to secure their transportation home.

An administration official said the cruise ship had stopped in Belize but officials there would not allow the passenger to leave the vessel.

A government official said that when the woman left the U.S. on the cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, on October 12, health officials were requiring only self-monitoring.

One official said it’s believed the woman poses no risk but health-care authorities want to get her off the cruise ship and back to the U.S. out of an abundance of caution.

The worker did not come into direct contact with Thomas Eric Duncan – the Ebola-infected man who died at the Dallas hospital on October 8.

US State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said the worker joined the cruise ship with a companion in Galveston, Texas on October 12.

‘The employee has been self-monitoring, including daily temperature checks, since October 6, and has not had a fever or demonstrated any symptoms of illness,’ Ms Psaki said.

The cruise ship is carrying more than 4,600 passengers and crew.

The Belize government said Washington has asked for assistance evacuating a cruise ship passenger who was considered to be ‘a very low risk of Ebola’ – but it refused because of the threat of infection.