The American Ebola patient currently receiving care at the National Institutes of Health has been upgraded to serious from critical condition, health officials said Thursday.
The patient, a healthcare volunteer being treated in the Special Clinical Studies Unit of the NIH Clinical Center, had been in critical condition since March 16. The patient was originally admitted to the hospital March 12 in serious condition.
At least 16 other volunteers working in Sierra Leone, West Africa with Partners in Health, a Boston-based not-for-profit, have been brought back to the U.S. because of concerns that they may have been exposed to the Ebola virus by the current NIH patient or in other ways similar to that patient's initial exposure.
All the volunteers are under direct-active monitoring in housing near the NIH, Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, which all have high-level biocontainment facilities.
One of the patients under observation at Nebraska Medical Center was admitted to the hospital's biocontainment unit after developing Ebola-like symptoms March 15, but was released later that week when the symptoms resolved and a test for Ebola came back negative.
