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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.
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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