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NY doctor hit by Ebola, renewing fears

NEW YORK — A doctor who worked in West Africa with Ebola patients was in an isolation unit in New York City yesterday after testing positive for the virus, becoming the fourth person diagnosed with the disease in the United States and the first in its largest city.

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NEW YORK — A doctor who worked in West Africa with Ebola patients was in an isolation unit in New York City yesterday after testing positive for the virus, becoming the fourth person diagnosed with the disease in the United States and the first in its largest city.

Dr Craig Spencer, 33, was placed in a quarantine unit at Bellevue Hospital on Thursday, six days after returning from Guinea, renewing public jitters about transmission of the disease and rattling financial markets.

At a news conference yesterday, the city’s health commissioner said he was awake and talking to family and friends on a mobile phone.

Three people who had close contact with Dr Spencer, a physician for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, were quarantined for observation — one of them, his fiancee, at the same hospital — but all were still healthy, officials said.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo sought to reassure New Yorkers they were safe, though Dr Spencer had ridden subways, taken a taxi and visited a bowling alley between his return from Guinea and the onset of his symptoms.

“There is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed,” Mr de Blasio said at a news conference at Bellevue Hospital. “Being on the same subway car or living near someone with Ebola does not, in itself, put someone at risk.”

Mr Cuomo said that unlike in Dallas, Texas, where two hospital nurses treating an Ebola patient contracted the disease, New York officials had time to prepare for the possibility of a case emerging in the city.

US stock index futures yesterday dipped, with the benchmark S&P 500 index down 0.3 per cent, as the first diagnosed case in New York City raised concerns about the spread of the virus.

Four Ebola cases have been diagnosed so far in the US: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on Oct 8 at a Dallas hospital, and two nurses who had treated him, as well as Dr Spencer.

Health officials emphasised that the virus is not airborne but is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person who is showing symptoms.

After taking his own temperature twice a day since his return, Dr Spencer reported running a fever and experiencing gastrointestinal symptoms for the first time early on Thursday. He was then taken from his Manhattan apartment to Bellevue by a special team wearing protective gear.

Mr Cuomo said Dr Spencer had checked into the hospital when he realised that he had a temperature of 37.9 °C, “not 103°F (39.4 °C) as has been reported”, suggesting he might have caught the onset of symptoms early.

He was not feeling sick and would not have been contagious before Thursday morning, City Health Commissioner Mary Travis Bassett said.

Owners of the bowling alley Dr Spencer had visited said they had closed it for the day as a precaution. The driver of the taxi he had taken was not considered at risk and officials insisted the subway lines he had ridden before falling ill remained safe. “We consider it extremely unlikely ... that there would be any problems related to his taking the subway,” Dr Bassett said. REUTERS

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