A New York City doctor is the first city resident to contract Ebola after testing positive for the virus today.
City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett says the test was conducted at the city’s public health lab and is expected to be confirmed at the CDC labs within the next 24 hours.
City Councilman Mark Levine says the man is Dr. Craig Spencer.
Bassett says the man is 33 and worked with the international nonprofit Doctors Without Borders in Guinea.
According to Bassett, he completed his work on October 12 and left Guinea on October 14. He traveled via Europe and arrived at JFK Airport on October 17.
Bassett says he was well without symptoms throughout his journey from Guinea to the United States and was also well when he arrived in the United States.
According to Bassett, he checked his temperature twice a day since he departed from Guinea.
Bassett says the first symptoms reported by the doctor were a fever sometime between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. this morning, and MSF notified the city’s Department of Health.
He was transported in a specialized ambulance from his apartment to Bellevue Hospital, where he is currently in an isolation unit.
According to Bassett, before he became sick, the patient did leave his apartment. She says he went on a three-mile jog and also rode the A, 1 and L trains in the New York City subway system.
He also went to The Gutter, a bowling alley in Williamsburg, yesterday with a couple of friends, according to Bassett, who says he did bowl. She says he was not symptomatic at the time.
Bassett says the doctor has been in contact with his fiancee and two friends. She says all three of those contacts are healthy and are being quarantined.
The driver of an Uber car that the doctor took had no direct physical contact with him and is not considered to be at risk, according to Bassett.
Mayor Bill de Blasio asked New Yorkers not to panic at a news conference Thursday evening.
“We want to state at the outset: there is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed,” de Blasio said. “Ebola is an extremely hard disease to contract. It is transmitted only through contact with an infected person’s blood or other bodily fluids, not through bodily contact.”
He later added, “Being on the same subway car or living near a person with Ebola does not in itself put someone at risk.”
Video shows police wearing masks and gloves as they are in the area around 147th Street near Broadway, which is near Spencer’s apartment.
The Department of Health says his apartment has been locked up, but his neighbors have told NY1 that his apartment was not sealed off, and they told NY1 that they had no indication that anything else was wrong at his fifth-floor apartment.
The AP says Spencer’s apartment in Harlem was cordoned off.
NY1 is also told that the apartment building has not been cleaned, and the Department says it’s not necessary because people are only at risk if they’ve come into intimate contact with him while he was symptomatic.
“We don’t believe that that’s necessary to do that, because again, it’s very hard to catch Ebola. You have to have direct contact with fluids,” said Sam Miller, associate commissioner for the Department of Health. “It is possible that somebody’s body fluids that are infected, that contain Ebola, could be on a surface, but there’s no known transmission of Ebola from a surface to a person.”
State and federal officials are working to identify everyone he’s come into contact with since returning home.
NY1 asked to speak with Spencer on Monday, and on Tuesday, NY1′s Michael Herzenberg was told that he would pass now but might be willing to speak next week.
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