One person quarantined due to contact with New York City’s first ebola patient, Craig Spencer, was released on Wednesday, the New York City health department announced.
The individual, whose identity was not disclosed, will continue to be monitored by health department staff and get assessed twice each day. The person is not showing symptoms of the disease at the moment and “poses no public health threat,” the health department said in a statement.
Spencer remains in stable condition and is receiving treatment at the Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. Another individual who was in contact with Spencer remains under quarantine.
As of Wednesday, 357 people are being monitored by the health department, most of them people who recently traveled to the three West African countries that have experienced an ebola outbreak—Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia—and arrived in New York City within the past 21 days.
Others being monitored are hospital staff who have cared for Spencer, emergency medical staff from the fire department who transported Spencer to the hospital, and lab workers who tested Spencer’s blood. None of them have shown symptoms of ebola, the health department said, but are being monitored out of caution.
At an unrelated press conference on Thursday, Ramanathan Raju, president and CEO of the city’s public hospital system, Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), said he is hopeful that Spencer will be released from isolation soon.
