Monday, November 10, 2014
Doctor infected with Ebola released from Hospital
A New York doctor who was
diagnosed with Ebola after working with patients in West Africa will be
released on Tuesday from a hospital where he has been treated for the disease,
the hospital said.
Dr. Craig Spencer,
33, had been held in isolation in Bellevue Hospital Center since he was
diagnosed with Ebola on October 23, after working with patients in Guinea with
Medecins Sans Frontieres.
Spencer will join
Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials and Bellevue staff at a news
conference on Tuesday morning. Spencer is expected to make a statement but not
take questions, the hospital said.
Ebola has killed
more than 4,950 people since it broke out in West Africa earlier this year,
according to the World Health Organization. The bulk of the cases and deaths
have come in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Spencer is one of a
handful of American health workers exposed to Ebola while working in West
Africa, the site of the worst outbreak of the disease on record.
In North Carolina,
health officials said on Monday a missionary doctor deemed to be at "some
risk" for developing the disease after returning from Liberia had been
placed under a 21-day quarantine.
It was the second
quarantine for Dr. John Fankhauser, 52, a family physician from Ventura,
California, who officials said has shown no signs of the virus since arriving
in Charlotte, Christian mission group SIM USA said.
In far northern
Maine, a nurse who treated Ebola patients in West Africa and publicly fought
quarantine orders in New Jersey and Maine after returning to the United States
last month planned to move from her home after her quarantine expired on
Monday, according to local media.
Medical experts say
Ebola can be transmitted only through the bodily fluid of a person who is
exhibiting symptoms.