WATCH: Belizean Prime Minister Dean Barrow said on Friday he could not to allow a cruise ship with a Dallas health care worker aboard who is being monitored for signs of Ebola to dock “without exposing some Belizeans to some degree of risk.”
WASHINGTON – Obama administration officials said a health care worker who handled a lab specimen from an Ebola-infected man from Liberia who died of the disease is on a Caribbean cruise ship where she has self-quarantined and is being monitored for any signs of infection.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement Friday that the woman had shown no signs of the disease and has been asymptomatic for 19 days.
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The government is working to return the woman and her husband to the U.S. before the ship completes its cruise. The White House said the State Department was working to secure their transportation home.
A White House official who was not authorized to be named and requested anonymity said the cruise ship had stopped in Belize but officials there would not allow the passenger to leave the vessel.
Psaki said that when the woman left the U.S. on the cruise ship from Galveston, Texas, on Oct. 12 health officials were requiring only self-monitoring.
An administration official said it’s believed the woman poses no risk but health-care authorities want to get her off the cruise ship and back to the United States out of an abundance of caution.
There have been no restrictions placed on other passengers aboard the ship.
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