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 "The patient is extremely low risk. It's just the fever that tipped
the balance," Dr. Lee Norman at University of Kansas Hospital in
Kansas City, Kansas, told a news conference.
Norman said the male patient in his early 30s, who lives in the
Kansas City metropolitan area, had been visiting family in Sierra
Leone and had stayed in a hotel there.
The patient, who returned home recently, had no fever when traveling
but developed one and went to the emergency room, Norman said.
The hospital said the patient is not a medical care worker and has
no history of being in contact with someone with Ebola, adding he
most likely was infected with malaria instead. He was being tested
for Ebola, malaria and other infectious diseases. Test results were
due back in a day or two, it added.
The man was "doing fine" but still had a fever. The hospital was
investigating who else the man might have been in contact with.
More than 11,000 people have lost their lives in the Ebola outbreak
in West Africa since the first reported case in March 2014, with
Liberia suffering the most deaths, according to the World Health
Organization. That country was earlier this month declared
Ebola-free.
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Only a handful of cases have been seen outside West Africa, in the
United States, Spain and Britain.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City, Missouri; Writing by Eric
M. Johnson; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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