The second nurse to become infected with the Ebola virus asked permission from the CDC several times before boarding a flight from Dallas to Cleveland but was told to go ahead because “somebody dropped the ball.”

That was what one health official told CBS News for a report Wednesday on the case of Amber Vinson, who cared for Ebola “patient zero” Thomas Duncan before Duncan’s death in Dallas on Oct. 8.

Vinson called the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta on Oct. 13 to report running a temperature of 99.5 degrees but was told it was OK to fly commercially because the fever was 1 degree below the critical point.

Now, health officials are scrambling to reach the other 132 people who were on that flight and Vinson is in an isolation unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

It’s only the latest in a series of missteps that marked the Ebola crisis in the U.S., from August when CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, brimming with confidence, told the media, “We’re confident that we have the facilities here to isolate patients, not only at the highly advanced ones like the one at Emory, but really at virtually every major hospital in the U.S.”

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Then came the Duncan case, then the first nurse infected, now a second nurse infected who was actually advised she could fly by the same CDC Frieden had so much confidence in.

Check out Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher’s report from Wednesday night’s “The Kelly File.”

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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