A nurse with Ebola who was able to board a flight in the US despite suffering from a fever did tell officials she was running a temperature, it has emerged.

Amber Vinson was able to travel from Cleveland, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas, on a commercial plane even though she was showing the early symptoms of the killer disease.

She has now had to be transferred to a specialist unit in Atlanta, Georgia, where she will be treated in isolation and monitored.

It was previously not known that she had made the authorities aware she was not feeling well before taking the flight on 13 October.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been forced to track down 132 other passengers who were on the plane at the same time in case they too have been infected.

Federal officials were forced to admit on Thursday that the CDC cleared the nurse to fly, heaping further pressure on an organisation that has been criticised for the speed of its response to the ebola crisis in America.

CDC spokesman David Daigle said 29-year-old Miss Vinson reported that her temperature was below 100.4 degrees (38C) and had no symptoms. Ebola sufferers are not contagious until they show symptoms.

As a result, the nurse was told she could travel on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143. The plane's crew said Miss Vinson did not exhibit any symptoms of ebola during the flight on Monday.

Miss Vinson caught Ebola after being one of several nurses to treat a man who came down with the virus and died after travelling to the US from Liberia.