NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Officials in Dallas County, Texas held off asking Gov. Rick Perry to declare a local state of emergency over Ebola, and will instead rely on ‘voluntary’ containment orders to restrict movement of workers who came in contact with victims of the disease.

An emergency declaration would have permitted the county judge or mayor to control access to the disaster area and “control the movement of persons and the occupancy of premises in that area,” according to the Dallas Morning News website. The newspaper also reported the county is seeking housing for health-care workers who are being monitored.

However, reports later Thursday indicated county officials would instead ask workers to sign papers promising to avoid public transit and public places.

Dallas County, which includes the city of Dallas, is home to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where Thomas Duncan, the patient who carried the Ebola virus with him from Liberia and later died from the disease, was treated. Two nurses there have been infected with the deadly virus.

More than 70 additional Presbyterian workers were in contact with Duncan, according to the Dallas Morning News.

The nurse who boarded a flight two days before being diagnosed with Ebola was starting to get a fever at the time she boarded the Frontier Airlines plane on Monday, health officials said Wednesday and, according to CNN and others, contacted the Centers for Disease Control ahead of the flight but was not barred from traveling. The airline has placed the six crew members on a paid 21-day break and taken the airplane out of service.

Ebola patients aren’t considered contagious until they have symptoms, which include a fever. The Ebola incubation period can run up to 21 days.

Meanwhile, 13 Ohio nurses on the flight are being monitored for Ebola symptoms, and First Energy Corp. FE, -2.81% said two employees have been asked to stay home for 21 days with pay. One Akron-area employee was visited by the nurse during her visit to Ohio, and the other employee self-identified as possibly having contact, the company said. The two employees don’t have direct contact with companies.

A Texas school district temporarily closed three of its campuses because two students also traveled on that flight, the Associated Press reported. The students’ parents are keeping them home for three weeks. The three schools — North Belton Middle School, Sparta Elementary and the Belton Early Childhood School — and some school buses are to be disinfected on Thursday.

Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut said it is evaluating a patient with “Ebola-like symptoms,” the Hartford Courant reported. The patient has recently traveled to Liberia and was admitted Wednesday evening.

Researchers tracking the virus with a computer model said there could be as many as two dozen people in the U.S. infected with Ebola by the end of October, although they cautioned the actual number will likely be far smaller, according Bloomberg News.