New York on Ebola alert after man admitted with symptoms

A man was admitted to a New York City hospital Monday with symptoms similar to those of Ebola and was being tested though odds are he is not infected, officials said.

In the early morning hours of Monday, a male patient with high fever and gastrointestinal symptoms presented at The Mount Sinai Hospital's Emergency Department in New York City, said its president David Reich.

The patient recently travelled to a West African country where Ebola has been reported, he added without naming the country.

"The first thing we'd like to stress is that odds are this is not Ebola. It's likely it's a much more common condition," Reich said, noting that testing and confirmation with the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta would take 48-72 hours.

"But using an abundance of caution, we're going to work carefully with the CDC to make certain this person does not have the Ebola virus," he added.

The patient "was promptly isolated and placed in a strict isolation facility," according to Reich who voiced confidence "we could protect the patient and also any staff and other patients in the facility and all visitors”.

According to an updated statement on Monday by the UN World Health Organisation, at least 887 people have died from Ebola since the beginning of the year, after the virus spread across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Ebola-like symptoms include fever, vomiting, severe headaches and muscular pain and, in the final stages, profuse bleeding.

Kent Brantly, the US doctor infected with the virus, "seems to be improving," the director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control, where he is being treated in an isolation unit, said on Sunday.

A second American infected with the virus while working in Liberia is due to arrive back in the United States on Tuesday.

The Christian missionary group SIM USA said Nancy Writebol, 60, was in a "serious but stable condition" and was "expected to return to the US for further treatment on Tuesday".

She will be evacuated on the same plane that carried Dr Brantly, and will also be taken to the isolation unit in Atlanta.

Reich said that if the New York patient is found to have Ebola, he believes he can be treated at Mount Sinai, and would not need to go to Atlanta.

"We believe that the care that it could be provided here would be sufficient for any patient with that disease," he said.

Asked about the Ebola situation at a summit of leaders from Africa in Washington, US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the United States was both watching and acting.

"Here at home, we're taking every precaution with the protections, protocols you've heard about, to make sure there's no problem here," he said.

And as for Africa, "I think you'll see over the coming days significant achievements being rolled out on our efforts" on health security," Blinken added.


Sierra Leone, Liberia deploy troops as Ebola toll hits 887

Hundreds of troops deployed in Sierra Leone and Liberia on Monday to quarantine communities hit by the deadly Ebola virus, as the death toll from the worst-ever outbreak reached 887 and three new cases were reported in Nigeria.

With healthcare systems in the West Africa nations overrun by the epidemic, the African Development Bank and World Bank said they would immediately disburse $260 million to the three countries worst affected - Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

The WHO, which warned last week of catastrophic consequences if the disease were not controlled, reported 61 new deaths in the two days to August 1 as the disease continues to spread.

The outbreak began in February in the forests of Guinea. The toll there continues to rise, but the epicentre has since shifted to neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

In Nigeria, where US citizen Patrick Sawyer became the first person to die of the virus after arriving from Liberia in late July, the WHO reported three new cases, two of them probable and one suspected.

Nigerian authorities had said earlier on Monday that a doctor who treated Sawyer had contracted the disease. A health ministry official declined to comment on the discrepancy.

Panic among local communities, which have attacked health workers and threatened to burn down isolation wards, prompted Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to announce tough measures last week, including the closure of schools and the quarantine of the remote forest region hardest hit by the disease.

Long convoys of military trucks ferried troops and medical workers on Monday to Sierra Leone's Far East, where the density of cases is highest.

Military spokesman Colonel Michael Samoura said the operation, code-named Octopus, involved around 750 military personnel.

Troops will gather in the southeastern town of Bo before travelling to isolated communities to implement quarantines, he added. Healthcare workers will be allowed to come and go freely, and the communities will be kept supplied with food.

In neighbouring Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and ministers held a crisis meeting on Sunday to discuss a series of anti-Ebola measures as police contained infected communities in the northern Lofa county.

Police were setting up checkpoints and roadblocks for key entrance and exit points to those infected communities, which nobody will be allowed to leave. Troops were deploying to badly affected areas to prepare to enforce the measures.

"The situation will probably get worse before it gets better," Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown told Reuters. "We are over-stretched. We need support; we need resources; we need workers."



 

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