CNN: Nation's First Ebola Patient Flew Into Dulles Airport

CNN is reporting Wednesday that the country’s first Ebola patient, now in a Dallas hospital, flew through Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia on his way to Texas from a flight in Brussels. He began his trip in Liberia.

The patient took a United Airlines flight from Brussels to Washington Dulles, Flight 951 and Washington Dulles to Dallas-Fort Worth, Flight 822, CNN is reporting.

The patient has been identified by several news reports as Thomas Eric Duncan, a 42-year old Liberian National. He reportedly caught the virus before coming to the United States, when he was helping his landlord take his sick daughter to the hospital. The girl later died.

Officials said that the Ebola patient had shown no symptoms of the disease while on the flight and that he had posed no threat to other passengers, the New York Times reported.

The newspaper reported that because Ebola is not contagious until symptoms develop, there is “zero chance” that the patient infected anyone else on the flight, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the director of the federal disease centers, said. Ebola is spread only by direct contact with body fluids from someone who is ill.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak is the largest in history and the first Ebola epidemic the world has ever known — affecting multiple countries in West Africa, according to the CDC. Although the risk of an Ebola outbreak in the United States is very low, CDC and partners are taking precautions to prevent this from happening. On Tuesday, the CDC confirmed the first travel-associated case of Ebola to be diagnosed in the United States.