A patient at Massachusetts General Hospital has shown negative for Ebola in a preliminary test, a day after he was admitted with some symptoms consistent with the disease, the hospital said on Wednesday.
“The patient has, however, tested positive for malaria,” the hospital said in a statement issued on its website. It added that more definitive testing would be conducted to completely rule out the possibility of Ebola.
The patient was admitted to the hospital on Tuesday afternoon and was being treated in a “specially prepared area within the hospital,” Mass General said.
Ebola has killed more than 6,000 people in West Africa since March in the worst outbreak on record, striking hardest in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The United States has seen just a handful of cases, mostly involving people who contracted the virus overseas.
U.S. health officials on Tuesday designated 35 hospitals around the nation as Ebola treatment centers; none were located in Massachusetts.