An aviation safety expert says that it may be three weeks before we know if the Ebola virus has spread as the result of the nurse, who helped care for the first Ebola patient in the United States, flying from Cleveland to Dallas while symptomatic.
"The real risk is that if the CDC is incorrect — that is if she was able to give other people Ebola during that flight, if in fact the virus has mutated in a way that makes it more powerful than before, it's possible that these people, even though they had a very slight exposure, may have Ebola virus in them," Todd Curtis of AirSafe.com told John Bachman and Olga Villaverde on "America's Forum" on
Newsmax TV Friday.
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"Of course, we won't know that one way or the other for about three weeks," Curtis explained.
He says that when Amber Joy Vinson, the second nurse diagnosed with the Ebola virus, flew from Cleveland to Dallas, potentially thousands were exposed to the disease.
"It has to do with the nature of the return flight to Dallas," he said.
"Dallas is a major hub airport for American Airlines, as well as being an international airport — it's very likely that of the 130 or so passengers who are on that plane, maybe 10 percent to 20 percent of them immediately changed planes to get on another flight going someplace," Curtis explained.
"Let's say if there are 20 other people on that flight who went on another journey, an average of 100 people on those flights, now you're talking about 2,000 additional people who may be exposed," he added.
The aviation safety expert says that
Frontier Airlines has done "a prudent thing" by "taking the airplane out of service, cleaning that aircraft and making sure that any passenger who may have been on those flights is forewarned."
"However, it has to go beyond Frontier because if those passengers got on to another flight with another airline or got on a bus or on a train, those other passengers may also be exposed," he added.
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