NYC doctor with Ebola upgraded to stable condition

NEW YORK: A New York doctor who became infected with Ebola while treating patients in Guinea has been upgraded from serious but stable condition to stable condition, hospital officials said, marking progress in a case that intensified the debate over how to treat health workers returning from West Africa.

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation issued the upgrade for Dr. Craig Spencer nine days after he was brought to the hospital after reporting a fever.

The agency, which runs Bellevue Hospital Center, where Spencer has been undergoing treatment, said he will remain in isolation and receive full treatment to recover from a virus that has killed nearly 5,000 people in West Africa.

Spencer, the only confirmed Ebola patient in New York, is a 32-year-old Doctors Without Borders physician who had returned from Ebola-plagued Guinea less than a week before notifying authorities Oct. 23 that he had a fever.

The HHC has said Spencer is receiving antiviral and plasma therapies that were effective in treating Ebola patients in Atlanta and Nebraska. Spencer’s quarantined fiancée and two friends remain symptom free.
City health officials also announced that they would no longer restrict the daily movements of one of the individuals who had been quarantined because of contact with Spencer. They said the person, who was not identified, would be assessed twice a day by Health Department staff.

The agency said in a statement that health officials reconfirmed that “the individual’s exposure was not consistent with how Ebola is transmitted.”

After Spencer was hospitalized, city health officials reassured the public that there was almost no chance strangers were infected by a virus that must be transmitted through bodily fluids. -AP