6 people tested for Ebola in NYC

By Leonard Greene
August 5, 2014 | 1:05pm

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A police officer talks on a cellphone in front of Mount Sinai Hospital on Aug. 4 in New York City.Photo: Eric Thayer/Getty Images


At least six people have been tested for Ebola in New York City in addition to a patient who was isolated amid fears he contracted the deadly virus on a trip to West Africa, according to CNN.

While the city remains on edge awaiting test results on the isolated patients, CNN’s chief medical correspondent reports that details of the other cases were not divulged publicly.

“There have been about a half a dozen patients who have had their blood tested because of concern, those particular patients their stories were not made public,” said CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta. “I’m not sure if that’s because of heightened concern by the hospital or what that means exactly.”

Gupta also suggested that the six patients tested for the Ebola virus were not being kept in isolation.

“This isn’t the kind of thing that they worry about spreading to other patients in the hospital, spreading to people who are walking around the hospital,” Gupta said. “This is not an airborne virus.”

But the latest patient was isolated immediately as a precaution, hospital officials said, even as they played down the likelihood that he had been stricken with the disease.

“Looking at his history, we think it’s highly unlikely that he has Ebola, but we’re going to await the tests from the CDC,” said Mary Bassett, the city’s health commissioner.

“I think what we learned from this is that people who are potentially infected with Ebola are rapidly identified, action is taken rapidly to ensure that they’re isolated and the public’s health is protected.”

Mt. Sinai’s other six patients tested negative, CNN said. Another patient was isolated at Bellevue Hospital last week after arriving from a trip to West Africa with symptoms. He was screened at John F. Kennedy International Airport and taken to the hospital.

But his fever cleared up within a day — and it was determined that he had not caught Ebola.

Meanwhile, a woman in Columbus, Ohio, is being tested for the Ebola virus after returning from a trip to a West African country plagued by the outbreak, according to NBC.

The woman, 46, was in isolation at a local hospital after showing symptoms of the disease. A medical sample has been sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for analysis.

http://nypost.com/2014/08/05/6-peopl...-ebola-in-nyc/