New York alert after first Ebola case

New York: New York went on alert on Friday as authorities sought to calm fears among the city’s 8.4 million residents after a doctor tested positive for Ebola.

Craig Spencer, 33, was rushed to the hospital with fever and gastrointestinal symptoms on Thursday, a week after returning from treating Ebola patients in Guinea with charity doctors without borders.

He tested positive for the disease, which has killed nearly 4,900 people in West Africa, at Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital Center and has been placed in isolation in intensive care.

“The last word on the patient this morning is he continues to be stable,” New York City health commissioner Mary Bassett said. Spencer is NY’s first case of Ebola and the first in the United States outside Texas. In Dallas, two nurses contracted the virus after treating a Liberian patient who later died of Ebola.

Health officials said the one of the two women, Nina Pham, has been declared free of the virus and will leave the hospital on Friday.

Relatives of the other nurse, Amber Vinson, said she was declared free of Ebola earlier this week.

Officials in New York said Spencer had been monitoring himself for signs of the disease and called Doctors Without Borders on Thursday when his temperature rose to 37.9 Celsius.

The Republican politicians have expressed outrage that the doctor took the subway the day before falling ill and gone bowling in Brooklyn. They called for a mandatory quarantine for health workers returning from Ebola-infected areas.

Politicians made fresh calls for the US administration to impose a travel ban from West Africa and quarantine those exposed to Ebola-afflicted countries.