--- title: Hospital Staffer Who May Have Had Ebola Contact Left U.S. on Cruise description: The Texas hospital employee has shown no indications of becoming sick canonical: https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/ author: Denver Nicks article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-17T11:34:26.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:51:07.866Z article:section: Health og:title: Hospital Staffer Who May Have Had Ebola Contact Left U.S. on Cruise og:description: The Texas hospital employee has shown no indications of becoming sick og:url: https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Hospital Staffer Who May Have Had Ebola Contact Left U.S. on Cruise twitter:description: The Texas hospital employee has shown no indications of becoming sick twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Hospital Staffer Who May Have Had Ebola Contact Left U.S. on Cruise Ship > Sponsored content. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola [Watch (HLS stream): Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EJ3m56cA.m3u8) (1:49)  _Published 2014-10-02. Health officials in the US are using a method known as contact tracing, to see who is at risk from Ebola._  by [Denver Nicks](https://time.com/author/denver-nicks/)  ## Denver Nicks Oct 17, 2014 11:34 AM UTC  by [Denver Nicks](https://time.com/author/denver-nicks/)  ## Denver Nicks Oct 17, 2014 11:34 AM UTC **Updated Friday, Oct. 17** An employee of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who may have come in contact with specimens taken from an Ebola patient left the United States aboard a cruise ship, the State Department [said](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/10/233060.htm) Friday. The revelation raises further questions about travel policies regarding health workers involved in treating Ebola patients after it came to light that a nurse later diagnosed with the virus was allowed to fly earlier this week despite self-reporting an elevated temperature. The employee on the cruise did not have direct contact with the patient, is not contagious, and has shown no indication of having contracted the illness in the 19 days since she came into contact with the Ebola patient’s fluid samples. The individual is nonetheless being monitored by doctors aboard the ship and has remained along with a traveling partner in voluntary isolation in a ship cabin. The hospital employee, who is a lab supervisor at the hospital where she works, according to Carnival Senior Cruise Director John Heald, left aboard a commercial cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, on October 12, before learning of new monitoring requirements from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “We are working with the cruise line to bring them back to the United States out of an abundance of caution,” the State Department said in a [statement](http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2014/10/233060.htm). In a Facebook [post](https://www.facebook.com/JohnHeald/posts/831289060246990?fref=nf) published Friday, Heald said the cruise line learned that the guest was aboard the ship on Wednesday. “It is important to reiterate that the individual has no symptoms and has been isolated in an extreme abundance of caution,” Heald said in his post. “We are in close contact with the CDC and at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/"},"headline":"Hospital Staffer Who May Have Had Ebola Contact Left U.S. on Cruise Ship","datePublished":"2014-10-17T11:34:26.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:51:07.866Z","description":"The Texas hospital employee has shown no indications of becoming sick","url":"https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/","keywords":["ebola","Texas","Disease","sick","hospital"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Denver Nicks","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/denver-nicks/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/ebola/","name":"ebola"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/","name":"Hospital Staffer Who May Have Had Ebola Contact Left U.S. on Cruise Ship"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Contact Tracing: How To Trace The Spread of Ebola","description":"Health officials in the US are using a method known as contact tracing, to see who is at risk from Ebola.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/EJ3m56cA/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-10-02T18:25:06.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/EJ3m56cA.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/","duration":"PT1M49S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3516586/ebola-cruise-ship/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```