Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, is in isolation at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He arrived back from Guinea on October 17 and had limited his public interactions but did not eliminate them, according to officials.
His ordeal appears to be reducing judging by latest events. Ebola survivor Nancy Writebol donated plasma to Spencer, said the charity SIM.
Writebol, a nurse, was one of the first two Americans diagnosed with the Ebola virus. She was successfully treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta in August.
Spencer’s fiancee, Morgan Dixon, had been under quarantine at Bellevue, but was cleared and has no symptoms, according to Jean Weinberg, a city health department spokeswoman.
On Saturday night, Dixon returned home to the hazmat-cleaned apartment she shares with Spencer in Manhattan.
Dixon’s family members have not been in physical contact with her or Spencer since his return from West Africa, according to a family statement.
Two friends of Spencer are under quarantine outside the hospital and are being monitored, though they feel healthy.
On the same day Cuomo and Christie announced new guidelines mainly because Spencer’s activities, which include riding in subways and cabs, have sparked a sharp public debate about how to deal with people who have traveled to West African countries ravaged by the disease.
On Saturday, one of the places visited by the Spencer, The Gutter bowling alley in Brooklyn, reopened after extensive decontamination work. And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio dined on meatballs at a Manhattan restaurant visited by the doctor.
Should the focus of American policy be to do everything to prevent anyone who has visited the most ravaged regions from entering the United States, even if it discourages health care workers from going there?
Some U.S. lawmakers, such as Rep. Andy Harris, favor a strict three-week quarantine. (That duration is significant because it takes anywhere from two to 21 days from the time a person is exposed to Ebola to when he or she shows symptoms of it; if more time than that passes without symptoms, a person is considered Ebola-free.)
“In return from being allowed to come back into the country from a place where a deadly disease is endemic, you’d have to enter a quarantine facility and be supervised for 21 days,” the Maryland Republican told CNN.
But other officials say while that policy could prevent some cases of Ebola in the United States over the short term, it could backfire if highly trained American doctors have less incentive to travel to Africa to fight the disease.
“These individuals who are going there to serve are the people who will end this crisis,” de Blasio said. “We can’t have the illusion that we can turn away from it and some day it may end. If we took that attitude, this would be a truly devastating global crisis.
