For the first time in nearly 10 weeks, no Ebola patient is being treated for the deadly disease in the United States.
America’s all-clear came Tuesday morning when Dr. Craig Spencer was declared virus-free and released from a New York City hospital.
Spencer contracted the disease
while treating Ebola patients in Guinea, but didn’t become ill until he
returned home late last month. He had been in isolation at Bellevue
Hospital Center since he was diagnosed with the virus on Oct. 23.
“My recovery from Ebola speaks to
the effectiveness of the protocols in place for health staff returning
from West Africa at the time of my infection,” Spencer, a volunteer with
Doctors Without Borders, said in a written statement.
“I am a living example of how
those protocols work, and of how early detection and isolation is
critical to both surviving Ebola and ensuring that it is not transmitted
to others,” he said.
Spencer, who is 33, is one of
four people to receive their diagnosis in the United States. Thomas Eric
Duncan, a Liberian citizen visiting family in Dallas, became the first
Ebola patient to ever be diagnosed with the virus in the United States
on Sept. 30. Officials believe Duncan, 42, had the disease when he flew
to Dallas on Sept. 20.
Nurses Nina Pham, 26, and Amber
Vinson, 29, then contracted the virus while caring for Duncan at Texas
Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
Duncan died after 10 days in intensive care,
becoming the country’s first and only recorded death from the disease.
Like Spencer, Pham and Vinson were declared virus-free and released from
isolation after treatment.
According to the World Health Organization,
more than 13,200 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of Ebola
virus disease have been reported in eight countries (Guinea, Liberia,
Mali, Sierra Leone, Spain, Nigeria, Senegal and the U.S.) since the
outbreak in West Africa was officially declared in late March. All but
27 cases have occurred in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, where nearly
5,000 people have died.
Since early August, four American
medical workers and a journalist who contracted Ebola — and one doctor
who had a suspected case — have been flown from West Africa to the U.S.
for treatment. All were cared for at facilities with specialized
treatment units and released.
While New Yorkers cheered
Spencer’s discharged on Tuesday, public health officials in a number of
states remain vigilant.
A nurse residing in central Texas who cared for
Ebola patients in Sierra Leone is considered to be at “some risk” of
exposure and has agreed to stay home during the incubation period.
In North Carolina, medical missionary Dr. John Fankhauser is cooperating with a 21-day quarantine ordered by Charlotte health officials. Fankhauser returned from Liberia last Saturday, according to SIM USA, an international Christian mission agency.
The doctor has not shown symptoms
of the virus, but health officials classified Fankhauser as at “some
risk” because he had been working in West Africa since Labor Day and was
known to have had contact with at least one Ebola patient.
Fankhauser, a family physician
from California, has been on the front lines fighting Ebola in Liberia
since the beginning of the year.
He personally treated his friends, Dr.
Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol, when they became the first American
missionaries to fall ill in late July.
He took a brief break in August
but returned to Liberia a short time later when a third American doctor
was evacuated to the U.S. for Ebola treatment.
“John’s commitment to helping
the people of Liberia is inspiring,” said Bruce Johnson, president of
SIM USA. “When his SIM colleague Rick Sacra became ill with Ebola, John
said, ‘Send me back in.’
He has worked tirelessly over the past two
months providing essential medical and administrative services at our
ELWA Hospital, including treatment of malaria patients and delivering
babies — services which are scarcely available.
Last week
he reported that our hospital was one of the only hospitals open in the
capital of 1.5 million people.”
Fankauser will complete his quarantine at the SIM mission’s secluded RV park near Charlotte.
Yahoo
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