(Story updated at 4:15 p.m. ET.)
The National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Washington admitted a patient Thursday who had exposure to Ebola.
The patient, an American nurse volunteer at an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone, was transported to the hospital via private charter medevac in isolation and admitted to the center's special clinical studies unit, one of the nation's four bio-containment units., at about 2:45 p.m. EST. The NIH said the nurse will be observed by the unit's physicians and enrolled in a clinical protocol.
No further details were available about the patient as of Thursday morning.
“NIH is taking every precaution to ensure the safety of our patients, NIH staff and the public,” a statement said. “This situation presents minimal risk to any of them.”
The nurse, if a diagnosis is confirmed, would be the 10th Ebola patient to be treated in the U.S. for the deadly virus, following the most recent treatment of Dr. Craig Spencer, a Doctors Without Borders physician, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He has since been declared free of the virus.
A Doctors Without Borders spokesman said he was not aware that any of the organization's volunteers were to be admitted to the NIH.
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