New York Ebola patient to be released from hospital

New York City, Nov 11 (IANS/EFE) The only person to be infected with Ebola in New York, Craig Spencer, will be discharged from hospital Tuesday after recovering from the disease, according to health officials.

"Dr. Spencer poses no public health risk and will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow," the department of health said in a statement Monday which also revealed that Spencer, who was the only Ebola patient being treated in the US, "has been declared free of the virus".

Spencer contracted Ebola while treating patients in Guinea with the group Doctors Without Borders from mid-September to mid-October when he returned to New York, where he lives, after a layover in Brussels.

More details of the case are expected to be disclosed at a press conference Tuesday by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Spencer became the first person to test positive for the deadly virus in the city Oct 23.

His diagnosis led New York and New Jersey authorities to tighten controls at airports for people coming from African countries affected by the epidemic.

According to The New York Times, Spencer was treated with an experimental drug and also given plasma from Nancy Whitebol, a missionary who became infected in Liberia and was cured.

The Ebola virus has already claimed 5,000 lives, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and has affected more than 13,000 people, according to the World Health Organisation.

Although there have been several cases of Ebola in the US, only one person has died from the disease in the country so far, the Liberian Thomas Duncan, in Dallas where he had come for a family visit.

--IANS/EFE

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