(Reuters) – Howard University Hospital said on Saturday that a medical team has determined that a patient feared afflicted with Ebola does not have the disease.
The Washington-based hospital, working with the District of Columbia Department of Health and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was able to rule out Ebola for the patient, whose identity was not disclosed. The patient is to be treated for “other illnesses,” according to the health department.
The hospital said on Friday that it had admitted a patient who returned from travel to Nigeria and placed him in isolation due to concerns he might have Ebola.
The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States took a turn for the worse on Saturday, slipping from serious to critical condition, as health officials reported fielding scores of possible cases around the country that proved to be false alarms.
The governments of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia are struggling to contain the worst outbreak on record of the deadly hemorrhagic fever. The World Health Organization on Friday said nearly 3,450 people had died of the disease since its outbreak in March.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam in Kansas City; Editing by Tom Brown)