NY doctor with Ebola improves

A New York City doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in West Africa is now stable, and health officials in Oregon said a woman who presented Ebola-like symptoms Friday is not likely to have the virus.

Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, is responding well to treatment, which has included brincidofovir, according to a statement released Saturday by the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. The experimental drug has been used to treat other patients in the U.S.

“Based on our patient’s clinical progress and response to treatment, today HHC is updating his condition to ‘stable’ from ‘serious but stable,’ ” the statement read. “The patient will remain in isolation and continue to receive full treatment.”

Spencer has been at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan since Oct. 23, six days after returning from Guinea, where he had been treating patients alongside the aid group Doctors Without Borders.

Meanwhile, health officials in Oregon are waiting to see if a woman who was hospitalized Friday with Ebola-like symptoms has the virus.

John Turner, a spokesman for the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Saturday that a test had been conducted but the results were not immediately available.

The woman, whose identity has not been made public, recently traveled to West Africa and has been monitored since her return. She came down with a high fever Friday and was taken to Providence Milwaukie Hospital, just outside Portland, according to Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, a spokeswoman for the Multnomah County Health Department.

On Saturday, the hospital said the woman was considered “low-risk for having the Ebola virus.”

Health officials have not said where the woman had been staying or when she returned to the U.S.

Sullivan-Springhetti said Friday that several people who had contact with her will be monitored.

The woman did not go out in public after presenting symptoms on Friday, officials said.

Several cases of Ebola have been treated in the U.S. in recent months, almost all of whom were health care workers who treated victims of the outbreak that has killed nearly 5,000 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia since March.

Spencer drew public scorn because he went out in public with his friends and fiancee after returning. Since then, several states, including New York, have required that medical staff returning from West Africa submit to 21-day quarantines and monitoring.