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 The patient, who recently returned from Liberia, had complained of
headache and muscle aches, prompting his admittance to an isolation
ward with close monitoring, the hospital said.
"This patient does not appear to meet CDC criteria to be considered
someone at high risk for Ebola and the likelihood of Ebola Virus
Disease is extremely low," the hospital said in a statement emailed
to Reuters.
Even so, the patient will remain in isolation, the hospital said.
The response in Massachusetts demonstrates the high state of alert
medical facilities are under since a Texas health worker became the
first person on Sunday to contract the disease in the United States.
She had treated a Liberian man who died of the deadly virus last
week.
"We are taking all necessary precautions in collaboration with the
city of Boston and the department of public health for the potential
that this is suspected Ebola,” Dr. Kenneth Sands, chief quality
officer at Beth Israel, said at a news conference. "We are only at
the stage where we are doing an assessment."
There have been several Ebola scares in the United States in the
past week. A plane was briefly quarantined at a Las Vegas Airport on
Friday after a passenger reported feeling unwell. Health officials
around the country have fielded scores of possible cases that were
false alarms.
On Sunday, a United Airlines flight from John F. Kennedy Airport in
New York landed at an isolated terminal at Los Angeles International
Airport after a passenger who had recently visited Africa began
vomiting and running a fever, officials said.
However, it turned out that the woman had visited South Africa,
which is not an area of concern for Ebola.
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The Massachusetts patient first reported to the Harvard Vanguard
Medical Associates hospital in Braintree, Massachusetts, and was
then transferred to Beth Israel, said Ben Kruskal, a physician and
chief of infectious disease at Vanguard, in a statement.
Kruskal said the Braintree building was closed briefly but reopened
The current Ebola outbreak, the worst on record of the disease, has
killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and
Guinea in West Africa.
(Reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Peter Cooney in
Washington, Frank McGurty in New York and Sharon Bernstein in
Sacramento; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Eric Walsh and Michael Perry)
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