Ebola Nurse Defends Decision to Take Commercial Flight: 'I Care'
The Dallas nurse who was recently cleared from the Ebola virus has defended her decision back in October to take a commercial flight one day before developing a fever as a symptom of the virus.
Amber Vinson, a 29-year-old nurse at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, contracted the Ebola virus after having close contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national being treated at the hospital who later died from the virus.
After Duncan had died, Vinson reportedly took a Frontier Airlines flight from Dallas to Cleveland for a weekend of wedding planning. The nurse developed a fever the day after and was admitted to the hospital with Ebola, and subsequently received criticism from the public, many of whom argued the nurse should have been in quarantine instead of taking a commercial flight and endangering other people's health.
"I'm a nurse," Vinson told CNN's Don Lemon in a recent interviw. "I care. I would not take Ebola to my family and my best girlfriends. I would not endanger families across the nation […] I had no symptoms."
"All I do is care," she added. "All I want to do is help."
Vinson was recently released from Emory University Hospital in Atlanta after being treated for Ebola quarantine for nearly a month. Some have sought to defend the nurse's decision to fly, especially because her supervisor at the hospital and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention both gave her permission to fly despite having just had close contact with an Ebola victim.
