Story highlights
17 Americans were exposed to the Ebola virus while in Sierra Leone in March
Another person was diagnosed with the disease and taken to hospital in Maryland
National Institutes of Health says the patient is in fair condition after weeks of treatment
Five Americans who were monitored for three weeks at an Omaha, Nebraska, hospital after being exposed to Ebola in West Africa have been released, a Nebraska Medicine spokesman said in an email Wednesday.
One of the five had a heart-related issue on Saturday and has been discharged but hasn’t left the area, Taylor Wilson wrote.
The others have already gone home.
They were exposed to Ebola in Sierra Leone in March, but none developed the deadly virus.
They are clinicians for Partners in Health, a Boston-based aid group. They all had contact with a colleague who was diagnosed with the disease and is being treated at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. As of Monday, that health care worker is in fair condition.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has said the last of 17 patients who were being monitored are expected to be released by Thursday.
More than 10,000 people have died in a West African epidemic of Ebola that dates to December 2013, according to the World Health Organization. Almost all the deaths have been in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Ebola is spread by direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.