U.S. Ebola patient may be out of the woods
BETHESDA, Md. -- Officials say an American health care worker who contracted Ebola while volunteering in Sierra Leone has improved to fair condition.
The National Institutes of Health announced Monday that the patient had been upgraded from serious condition. It is a positive sign for the patient, who was listed in critical condition earlier in his treatment.
He is being treated at the NIH hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, where he arrived on March 13. He was flown there in isolation on a specially-equipped medical charter plane after developing symptoms and testing positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone.
The patient's name and age have not been released. He is the 11th person to be treated for Ebola in the U.S.
He contracted Ebola while working with Partners in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit organization. The group has been treating patients in Liberia and Sierra Leone since November.
Health officials are monitoring about 40 other Americans who may have been in contact with the infected man. None tested positive as of late last week. The 21-day monitoring period for all of them ends this week.
One of the people being monitored was hospitalized at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha over the weekend after he developed a heart problem while jogging. Officials said he posed no risk to the public.