Patient With Measles Might Have Exposed North Texans
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TARRANT COUNTY (CBSDFW.COM) - The Tarrant County Public Health Department is working to find out how many people on an international flight into Dallas Fort Worth International Airport may have been in contact with a measles patient on the plane.
The patient is a Tarrant County resident who flew home from India via a connection from Dubai to DFW on January 6.
The patient has since recovered, health officials say, but was infectious and was showing symptoms - including a rash - while on the flight to North Texas.
The only non-stop Dubai to DFW flight is Emirates Flight 221.
"If there's an un-immunized person in close contact with a sick individual, 90-percent of the time they'll end up with the disease. Obviously it is very contagious," said Vinny Taneja, Director of Public Health.
Taneja says the health department is working to obtain the flight manifest, which the CDC will provide from the airline. Health workers will then know who may have been at risk, and can check to see if those passengers are immunized against measles.
Measles is spread by coughing and sneezing and is an airborne disease which usually lasts two weeks. Most people born after 1957 have been immunized.
"What we're really concerned about is this person obviously flew on a plane. We're working with the CDC to get a hold and understand how many people we need to follow up on. Hopefully a lot of those people have taken immunizations and we wouldn't ave to do much," said Taneja.
Six family members of the patient are being monitored, including four adults and two children.
All but two adults have immunization records. The four with immunization are not considered at risk and health workers are monitoring the two adult relatives, who could not provide a history of records.
Taneja says the patient did not go out into the community upon returning to Tarrant County, except to go to the doctor. Once the measles case was identified by the state lab, local health workers took steps to talk to the family and their neighbors.
Taneja said, "The patient should not have traveled, but a lot of folks don't know that they're coming down with an illness like measles. It starts off like a very general illness. You've got a fever, runny nose, throat, most folks are like, 'Okay that's no big deal. But by the time [the patient] arrived here they'd already developed the rash."
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