NYC doctor with Ebola passes time in hospital with quirky hobby

The New York City doctor who is being treated for Ebola is continuing to improve and has been playing the banjo in his hospital room, hospital officials said Thursday.

A spokeswoman for the city Health and Hospitals Corporation says Dr. Craig Spencer requested the banjo and an exercise bike and has been using both.

The agency's president, Dr. Ram Raju, said Spencer "continues to be stable and making good progress."

"He is an avid little banjo player and he's self-taught," Chriselle Gardner, the mother of Spencer's fiancee Morgan Dixon, told The New York Post. "I can tell you, he's keeping his doctors amused."

Spencer tested positive for Ebola after treating patients in the West African nation of Guinea with the group Doctors Without Borders. He has been in an isolation room at Bellevue Hospital since Oct. 23.

Spencer's condition was upgraded from serious to stable over the weekend, and Raju said Thursday that officials hope Spencer's isolation can be lifted soon.

Spencer has the only confirmed case of Ebola in New York City. His fiancee, Morgan Dixon, is in quarantine at the couple's Manhattan apartment. Quarantine has been lifted for friends who had socialized with the couple.

As of Wednesday, 357 people in New York City are being actively monitored for possible Ebola.

Most of those are travelers who arrived within the past 21 days from Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone, the three Ebola-affected countries.

The list also includes emergency medical staff who transported Spencer to Bellevue and those caring for him plus laboratory workers who conducted his blood test.

The news of Spencer's infection prompted New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to announce a mandatory 21-day quarantine for travelers who have come in close contact with Ebola patients.