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This photo provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the Ebola virus. (CDC via Associated Press)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has confirmed the first case of Ebola that's been diagnosed in the United States.
"An individual traveling from Liberia has been diagnosed with Ebola in the United States," Thomas Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a conference call Tuesday afternoon.
State and federal health officials announcing the confirmed case repeatedly stressed the difficulties of contracting Ebola, which can be spread through bodily fluids or infected animals but not through the air or by water.
This person who is infected left Liberia on Sept. 19 and arrived in the U.S. the following day. The person had no symptoms when they arrived, but began developing symptoms four days after arriving in the United States.
"The bottom line here is that I have no doubt that we will control this importation, or this case of Ebola, so that it does not spread widely in this country," he said. "It is certainly possible that someone who had contact with this individual could develop Ebola in the coming weeks. But there is no doubt in my mind that we will stop it here."
Health officials are going to work to identify everyone who may have been exposed to this patient, Frieden said. They will be watched for three weeks to see if any symptoms emerge.
"Remember, Ebola does not spread from someone who's not infectious," Frieden said. "It does not spread from someone who does not have a fever or other symptoms."
In addition, Edward Goodman, the hospital epidemiologist at Texas Health Presybterian Hospital Dallas, reiterated that Ebola is not an airborne infection.
David Lakey, head of the Texas Department of Health Services, said the state's laboratory in Austin, Tex., was certified last month to do Ebola testing. That laboratory received a blood sample from the patient on Tuesday morning and confirmed it was Ebola shortly after 1 p.m., he said.
The Texas Department of Health Services said that the patient is at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
The test, the Texas health department said, was conducted at the state public health laboratory in Austin and later confirmed by the CDC.
In the statement, the health department said:
The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history is centered in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where it has killed more than 3,000 people and infected thousands of others. There is a separate outbreak in Congo.
No Ebola cases had been confirmed in the United States previously, although several American doctors and aid workers who were infected in West Africa have returned home for treatment. One of them, Richard Sacra, was discharged last week from a Nebraska hospital.
Days later, the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda admitted an American physician who was exposed to the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone.
Possible Ebola patients who were tested in New York, California, New Mexico and Miami all tested negative for the virus.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/.../cdc-confirms-first-case-of-ebola-in-the-u-s/
