The National Institute of Health in Maryland announced today that the American healthcare worker who contracted the Ebola virus in Sierra Leone has been "successfully treated at the NIH Clinical Center Special Clinical Studies Unit," and was allowed to return home.
The NIH did not release any additional information about the identity of the individual, but said that the person is "no longer contagious to the community."
In a statement sent to BuzzFeed News on March 26, the National Institutes of Health confirmed that the condition the American healthcare worker diagnosed with Ebola in Sierra Leone has improved to serious from critical.
The patient's identity has not been released to the public.
On Saturday, March 14, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that more Americans who may have been exposed to a U.S. volunteer infected with Ebola returned to the U.S
The unidentified patient arrived in the U.S. the day before and was admitted to the U.S. National Institutes of Health's containment facility in Maryland.
"The patient's condition is still being evaluated," NIH said in a statement.
As part of the investigation, however, the CDC announced Saturday that people exposed to that patient, or who may have had, "exposures similar to those that resulted in the infection of the index patient," will be flown back to the U.S. for observation.
"None of these individuals have been identified as having Ebola virus disease," the statement read.
Four people will be monitored by Nebraska Medicine for any signs of Ebola.
Four patients exposed to Ebola in Sierra Leone coming here for monitoring. They are not sick and not contagious.
The monitoring period is 21 days, and unless patients show symptoms of Ebola such as fever and vomiting, they are not contagious.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland prepared Thursday for the arrival of a U.S. health care worker who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone.
According to the NIH, the unidentified American had been volunteering in an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone. A chartered aircraft was set to transport the healthcare worker back to the U.S. using isolation protocols.
The patient was set to be treated at the NIH's special clinical studies unit, one of a handful of high-level containment facilities in the U.S. It is the same unit where Texas nurse Nina Pham was successfully treated for the virus.
So far, more than 11,000 people have contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone and more than 3,000 have died. In the U.S., four people have tested positive for Ebola and one has died.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not state how many additional Americans who were exposed to the patient will be returning home.
Those people will be located near the University of Nebraska Medical Center, the National Institutes of Health, or Emory University Hospital for observation and will be under the CDC's recommended monitoring and movement guidelines, according to the statement.
That includes voluntary 21-day self-isolation during the incubation period.
Those who show symptoms of the virus will be transported to an Ebola treatment center to be evaluated and receive treatment, the agency said.
Also on Thursday, Dr. Nancy Snyderman resigned from NBC News following breaking a quarantine after returning from Liberia.
