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 Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, had been held in isolation in Bellevue
Hospital Center since he was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 23, after
working with patients in Guinea with Médecins Sans Frontières.
Spencer will join Mayor Bill de Blasio and other city officials and
Bellevue staff at a news conference on Tuesday morning, the hospital
said. Spencer is expected to make a statement but not take
questions, the hospital said.
Spencer's diagnosis followed trips on the subway to eat out and go
bowling with friends, provoking alarm, which public-health experts
said was unfounded, about the possible spread of the virus in the
city.
Ebola has killed more than 4,950 people since it broke out in West
Africa earlier this year, according to the World Health
Organization. The bulk of the cases and deaths have come in Sierra
Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Spencer is one of a handful of American health workers exposed to
Ebola while working in West Africa, the site of the worst outbreak
of the disease on record.
In North Carolina, health officials said on Monday a missionary
doctor deemed to be at "some risk" for developing the disease after
returning from Liberia had been placed under a 21-day quarantine.
It was the second quarantine for Dr. John Fankhauser, 52, a family
physician from Ventura, California, who officials said has shown no
signs of the virus since arriving in Charlotte, Christian mission
group SIM USA said.
In far northern Maine, a nurse who treated Ebola patients in West
Africa and publicly fought quarantine orders in New Jersey and Maine
after returning to the United States last month planned to move from
her home after her quarantine expired on Monday, according to local
media.
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The nurse, Kaci Hickox, and her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, told local
media they had faced some harrassment since her arrival in Fort Kent
and wanted to move someplace they could live quietly.
Hickox had feuded with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Maine
Governor Paul LePage, saying the limits they sought to impose on her
movements were not grounded in science.
Medical experts say Ebola can be transmitted only through the bodily
fluid of a person who is exhibiting symptoms.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by
Sandra Maler)
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