Thursday, October 16, 2014
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
How come nurses wearing protective gear can catch Ebola from a patient, but health officials keep saying you almost certainly won’t get it from someone sitting next to you on a plane?
First, the odds of an Ebola-infected seatmate in the U.S. remain tiny, even after the news that a nurse coming down with the disease flew commercial across the Midwest this week.
Then there’s the extra screening that’s begun on airline passengers arriving from West Africa.
But even if you were to draw that unlucky spot next to a traveler with a yet-unknown infection, the disease experts would consider you at little or no risk.
Here’s why: that person on the bus or plane might not be contagious yet
People infected with Ebola aren’t contagious until they start getting symptoms, such as fever, body aches or stomach pain, research shows.
So far, two infected travelers are known to have flown U.S. commercial airlines:
The Liberian man who died in a Dallas hospital Oct. 8 wasn’t ill when he flew to the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. So passengers on his United Airlines flights aren’t considered at risk.
The nurse who flew Frontier Airlines from Ohio back to Dallas on Monday night wasn’t experiencing symptoms, either, the CDC said. But by Tuesday morning she had a fever.
But what if that guy on the plane is sick?
Even if a traveler is already feeling sick, Ebola germs don’t spread through the air the way flu does.
Ebola is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluid, such as getting an infected person’s blood or vomit into your eyes or through a cut in the skin, experts say.
What if a sick person’s wet sneeze hits your hand and then you absentmindedly rub your eyes? Could that do it?
Asked about such scenarios recently, Frieden allowed that, theoretically, “it would not be impossible” to catch the virus that way. But it’s considered highly unlikely. No such case has been documented.
“Should you be worried you might have gotten it by sitting next to someone?” he said Wednesday. “The answer to that is no.”