The Texas Department of State Health Services issued a statement over night announcing that an unidentified health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian has tested positive for Ebola.

A second health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States has tested positive for the disease.

The health care worker reported a fever Tuesday and was immediately isolated at the hospital.

Health officials have interviewed the latest patient to quickly identify any contacts or potential exposures, and those people will be monitored. The type of monitoring depends on the nature of their interactions and the potential they were exposed to the virus.

The worker was among those who took care of Thomas Eric Duncan after he was diagnosed with Ebola.

The preliminary Ebola test was run late Tuesday at the state public health laboratory in Austin, and results were received at about midnight.

Confirmatory testing on a separate specimen will be conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. 

Ebola is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids of a sick person or exposure to contaminated objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.

More soothing talk of how there’s nothing to worry about in the last two sentences. The CDC also continues the happy talk:

 "As we have said before, because of our ongoing investigation, it is not unexpected that there would be additional exposures," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in an emailed statement. 

"An additional health care worker testing positive for Ebola is a serious concern, and the CDC has already taken active steps to minimize the risk to health care workers and the patient," the agency said.  

Relax. The country is in the best of hands.

Update from Sally Zelikovsky:

It turns out, the second Ebola victim who contracted the disease from contact with Thomas Duncan was on a plane the day before she became symptomatic, Frontier flt. 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas, sadly proving that concerns about travel bans from Ebola-riddled countries should be heeded by the so-called experts working in the government.  With an R2 factor, for every infected victim, two more will become infected.  We have two from Duncan and now we wait and see if these two new cases result in two more each…and this is exactly how the cookie crumbles.