DC Hospital Isolates Patient With Ebola Symptoms

Person had traveled recently to Nigeria
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 3, 2014 12:16 PM CDT
DC Hospital Isolates Patient With Ebola Symptoms
Red Cross representatives depart the Ivy Apartments in Dallas after dropping off supplies to residents in one of the units. The Dallas Ebola patient was staying there when he began showing symptoms.   (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

A hospital in DC says a person who recently traveled to Nigeria came to the hospital overnight with Ebola-like symptoms, reports NBC Washington. No diagnosis has been made, but authorities at Howard University Hospital have isolated the person out of "an abundance of caution" until tests either confirm or rule out the disease, reports CNN. The move is in contrast to what happened in Dallas, where Thomas Duncan showed up sick at a hospital last week, said he had arrived recently from West Africa—and then got sent home. When he returned even sicker two days later, he was diagnosed with Ebola, having had close contact with several people in the interim.

"Our medical team continues to evaluate and monitor progress in close collaboration with the CDC and the Department of Health," says a statement from the DC hospital. Nigeria has had 19 confirmed cases of Ebola, but the country is being praised for a quick response that seems to have kept the disease in check, reports CBC. It helps that Nigeria is richer and generally more politically stable than the West African countries with the majority of cases— Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. (An NBC cameraman in Liberia is the latest American to be diagnosed.)

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