New York – New York Ebola Patient Is In Stable Condition, City Official Says

New York – Authorities retraced the steps of an American doctor with Ebola, who was listed Friday in stable condition at a New York hospital’s isolation unit, while seeking to reassure a jittery public that the threat from the virus was limited.

Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, who was infected after working with Ebola patients in West Africa, on Thursday became the fourth person diagnosed with the disease in the United States and the first in its largest city.

Spencer was awake and talking to family and friends on a cellphone, Dr. Mary Travis Bassett, New York’s health commissioner, said at a news conference.

Meanwhile, Nina Pham, one of two nurses from a Dallas hospital infected with Ebola after treating the first patient diagnosed with the disease in the United States, was declared virus-free. She walked out smiling and unassisted from the Maryland hospital where she had been treated.

The White House said President Barack Obama will meet with Pham in the Oval Office later in the day.

An Atlanta hospital and federal health officials also confirmed that the other nurse, Amber Vinson, no longer had detectable levels of virus but did not set a date for her to leave that facility.

Spencer was quarantined at Bellevue Hospital six days after returning from Guinea, unnerving financial markets amid concern the virus may spread in the city. The three previous cases diagnosed in the United States were in Dallas.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said health officials are retracing all the steps taken Spencer, but urged New Yorkers not to worry and to stick with their daily routines.

Three people who had close contact with Spencer, a physician who volunteered for the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, were quarantined for observation. The doctor’s fiancée was among them and isolated at the same hospital, and all three were still healthy, officials said.