UPDATED: U.S. Announces First Ebola Patient

UPDATED 10/1/14, 12:57 P.M. EST: According to published reports, the unidentified patient, who is the United States’ first Ebola case, traveled from Liberia on September 19th. The next day, the man visited relatives and then began feeling ill about four to five days later.

When he initially went to the hospital, last Wednesday, he was sent home with antibiotics. Two days later, when the symptoms reportedly became worse, he called an ambulance, vomiting en route to the hospital.

Now a team from the Centers for Disease Control is looking to locate anyone who has had contact with the Ebola patient since his arrival in the United States and has quarantined all who have had contact, including the ambulance workers.

The Associated Press reports:

A nine-member team of federal health officials is tracking anyone who had close contact with a man being treated for Ebola in a Dallas hospital, the director of the nation’s top disease-fighting agency said Wednesday.

The team from the Centers for Disease Control is in Dallas to work with local and state health agencies to ensure that those people are watched every day for 21 days.

“If anyone develops fever, we’ll immediately isolate them to stop the chain of transmission,” CDC Director Tom Frieden said in an interview with The Associated Press.

__________________________________________________________

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced Tuesday evening that the United States has its first official Ebola patient, according to the Associated Press.

The unidentified patient is currently being treated at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital (pictured), after traveling to Liberia and coming down with Ebola-like symptoms.

Since July 27th, 27 other possible victims have been tested for Ebola. And while those patients results all came back negative, the Texas patient’s results made him or her the United States’ very first Ebola patient.

Watch news coverage of America’s first Ebola case here:

 

Four other American aid workers have contracted the deadly disease this year while volunteering in West Africa. All were returned to the States and then treated in isolation units in Atlanta and Nebraska.

CDC Spokesman Jason McDonald explained the main guidelines health officials use when determining whether they will test for Ebola.

“The first and foremost determinant is have they traveled to the region (of West Africa),” he said. The second is whether there’s been proximity to family, friends, or others who’ve been exposed,” he said.

While Ebola has successfully been contained in Senegal and Nigeria, more than 3,000 people have died in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia.