Jim Young/Reuters
Texas officials moved for the first time Thursday to force health care workers who had contact in Dallas with deceased Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan to stay home. Seventy-five Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital employees were asked to sign legal documents agreeing not to go to public places or use mass transit, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. The agreements are binding legal documents that can be enforced with a variety of remedies, Jenkins said. He declined to elaborate on specific punishments. "From 21 days after their last exposure, we are agreeing that they are not going to go on any sort of public conveyance - any sort of public transportation," Jenkins said. "We are agreeing that they won't go where people congregate - public spaces - and we are agreeing that they will self-monitor and allow us to monitor them twice a day." The move comes after nurse Amber Vinson, who cared for Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian, took a flight across the Midwest and deepened anxiety about whether the virus would spread in the U.S. Meanwhile, Nina Pham, the first nurse to contract Ebola at the Dallas hospital, arrived in Maryland, where she will be treated in a National Institutes of Health Isolation unit.