Second Texas health worker tests positive for Ebola

A second nurse who fell ill with Ebola after treating the first patient on US soil to die of the disease boarded a plane just a day before she reported feeling ill, sparking fears more people might have caught the deadly infection.

Amber Vinson, 29, took a Frontier Airlines flight from Cleveland, Ohio, to Dallas-Fort Worth on October 13, prompting the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the airline to reach out to all 132 passengers onboard, advising them to call a toll-free hotline.

It comes as nurses at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas where Liberian Ebola patient Thomas Duncan died last week complained they were given little guidance on how to treat the man.

They said Duncan was left in an open area of the emergency room for hours and nurses treating him worked for days without proper protective clothing.

Nurses were forced to use medical tape to secure openings in their garments, worried that their necks and heads were exposed as they cared for a patient with diarrhea and projectile vomiting, said Deborah Burger of National Nurses United.

The nurses' union shared the revelations from workers at Presbyterian Hospital Dallas without disclosing their names.