NYC Doctor Tests Positive for Ebola, First Case in the State

A New York City doctor who recently treated Ebola patients in West Africa has tested positive for the deadly virus, officials said Thursday night.

Craig Spencer, 33, is currently at Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan, where he was admitted Thursday with a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. The positive Ebola test is the first in New York.

Three people who have been in contact with Spencer, including his fiancee, are not ill, but have been quarantined and will be monitored for the next 21 days, officials said at a press conference at Bellevue Thursday night.

“There is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed,” NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said. “Ebola is very difficult to contract. Being on the same subway car or living near someone with Ebola does not in itself put someone at risk.”

Spencer, who is an emergency physician at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center according to his LinkedIn profile, returned from Guinea last week after working with Doctors Without Borders in the Ebola-stricken country.

He arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Oct. 17 and throughout his journey home ”he was well with no symptoms,” said Mary Bassett, the commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Spencer took his temperature twice a day since arriving home, Bassett said. He began to feel “tired” on Tuesday, but he didn’t come down with a fever until Thursday morning, at which time he contacted Doctors Without Borders.

“As per the specific guidelines that Doctors Without Borders provides its staff on their return from Ebola assignments, the individual engaged in regular health monitoring and reported this development immediately,” the nonprofit organization said in a statement on its website.

Spencer was transported from his Harlem apartment on W. 147th Street to Bellevue by a specially trained HAZ TAC unit wearing personal protective equipment, health officials said.

An Ebola test was conducted “because of this patient’s recent travel history, pattern of symptoms, and past work,” the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement on its website.

After the positive test came back, officials, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, stressed that Ebola can only be transmitted by direct contact with an infected person’s bodily fluids.

“I know the word Ebola can spread fear just by the sound of the word,” Cuomo said at the press conference, adding that the state has been preparing for weeks for the possibility of an Ebola case. “Ebola is not an airborne illness.”

Spencer was out in New York City several times since his return home, officials said. At one point, he went on a 3-mile jog. The focus, however, has been on the doctor’s activities on Wednesday.

Spencer went to the High Line, a public park on Manhattan’s West Side and may have stopped at a restaurant, Bassett said. He later traveled on the subway’s A and L trains to a bowling alley in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn called The Gutter. He bowled with friends and then took an Uber taxi back home, Bassett said.

The Uber driver had no direct contact with Spencer and is not considered to be at risk of contracting Ebola. Officials said Spencer did not have a fever while at the bowling alley.

“He was only exposed to a very few people when he had symptoms,” Cuomo said of Spencer, who is being treated in an isolation unit at Bellevue, one of eight New York hospitals designated to treat Ebola patients.

Spencer has also been on the subway’s 1 train since arriving home, but Bassett said the chances of anyone contracting the virus from Spencer on the train were “close to nil” as someone would need to be in direct contact with Spencer’s bodily fluids–such as blood, vomit or feces–in order to be at risk.

Several people have been diagnosed with Ebola across the country recently, but only one, 42-year-old Thomas Eric Duncan, has died from the virus. Duncan died in a Dallas hospital after contracting Ebola in Liberia.

Cuomo said state and city agencies are well-prepared to combat the virus. In Duncan’s case, Cuomo said Dallas was ”caught before they could really prepare, before they really knew what they were dealing with.” New York officials have had the time to learn from what went wrong in Dallas, Cuomo said.

”We are as ready as one could be for this circumstance,” he said. “What happened in Dallas was actually the complete opposite.”

Photo: Craig Spencer/LinkedIn

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• Travel From Ebola-Affected Countries Restricted To Five Airports, Including JFK
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• Hartsfield-Jackson Employee on Leave Following West Africa Trips
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