Exclusive- Man on same flight as Ebola nurse travelled to Niagara

In an exclusive story CHCH News has learned that a passenger who was on the same flight  as a nurse who contracted Ebola, travelled to the Niagara Region days later.

He’s a customer of Beamsville company Opplast Inc, a soap dispenser manufacturer.

When he told the company the news, he was asked to leave immediately.

The man flew from Dallas to Cleveland last Friday on the same plane as Amber Vinson, the second nurse infected with Ebola.

He arrived in Beamsville on Wednesday.

Around noon Thursday, he was informed by the Centers for Disease Control that he was a passenger on the flight flagged for the disease.

Opplast’s human resources manager Jocelyn Guinard says within an hour of hearing the news from the customer, they called Niagara Public Health Department and the CDC.

“We asked him to leave the property, and actually he agreed. The CDC said they considered very little risk associated with the incident.”

Yesterday Guinard and Opplast met with its 150 employees.

“Essentially we told them what happened. The facts around the person declaring he was on that flight. We brought the employees in and gave them all the information.”

Despite the assurances from the CDC, at least one employee at the company called in sick, citing safety concerns.

Opplast management is staying in contact with the customer. They last spoke to him around 1p.m. Friday.

Meanwhile Niagara Public Health also has the name and address of the customer who was on the plane with the nurse.

Public Health says it doesn’t need to know the names and addresses of anybody he’s had contact with.

The man has not shown any symptoms and has been cleared to fly back to Dallas from Cleveland this weekend.