NEW YORK — A Doctors Without Borders physician who recently returned to the city after treating Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the virus, according to preliminary test results, city officials said Thursday.
He’s the fourth confirmed case in the U.S. and the first in the nation’s biggest city.
A further test by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be necessary to confirm the initial test results.
Craig Spencer, 33, an emergency room doctor, returned from Guinea on Oct. 17 and reported Thursday coming down with a 103-degree fever and diarrhea. He was rushed to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital, a designated Ebola center, and was being treated in a specially built isolation ward.
“There is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference late Thursday. “Ebola is an extremely hard disease to contract.”
The CDC has dispatched an Ebola response team to New York, and the city’s disease detectives have been tracing the doctor’s contacts to identify anyone who might be at risk. The city’s health commissioner, Mary Bassett, said Spencer’s fiancée and two friends had been quarantined.
City officials say Spencer acknowledged riding the subway and taking a cab to a Brooklyn bowling alley in the past week before he started showing symptoms.
His Harlem apartment was cordoned off. The Department of Health was on site across the street from the apartment building Thursday night, giving out information to area residents.
Health officials say the chances of the average New Yorker contracting Ebola, which is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, are slim. Someone can’t be infected just by being near someone who is sick with Ebola.
The Ebola epidemic in West Africa has killed about 4,800 people. In the United States, the first person diagnosed with the disease was a Liberian man, who fell ill days after arriving in Dallas and later died, becoming the only fatality. Two nurses who treated him were infected and are hospitalized.
De Blasio said proper protocols were followed every step of the way in Spencer’s case, and it didn’t appear he had been showing symptoms for very long.
“The patient is in good shape and has gone into a great deal of detail with our personnel as to his actions the last few days so we have a lot to work with,” de Blasio said earlier in the day. “We have a patient who has been very communicative and precise and who has only been back a very short time and has been quite clear about individuals he had close contact with.”
According to a rough timeline provided by city officials, Spencer’s symptoms developed Wednesday, prompting him to isolate himself in his apartment.
When he felt worse Thursday, he and his fiancée made a joint call to authorities to detail his symptoms and his travels. EMTs in full Ebola gear arrived and took him to Bellevue in an ambulance surrounded by police squad cars.
Spencer works at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. He had not seen any patients or been to the hospital since his return, the hospital said in a statement, calling him a “dedicated humanitarian.” Four American aid workers have been infected with Ebola while working in Africa and were transferred to the U.S. for treatment in recent months. All recovered.
