N.Y. doctors await Ebola test results

NEW YORK – It took about seven minutes for a man to be whisked into isolation at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital on Monday after he arrived at the emergency room with symptoms common to Ebola, health officials said as they awaited test results on the patient.

The man, who has not been identified, is at least the second person tested for possible Ebola in the last week in New York City. Last Wednesday, a patient was admitted to Bellevue Hospital and “immediately isolated with consideration for Ebola virus,” the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. said in a statement.

“However, the patient is improving and this diagnosis is no longer being considered” following consultations with health officials, the statement said.

Officials at Mount Sinai said they hoped to get results on their facility’s patient within 24 to 48 hours. They said there was no threat to anyone else in the hospital because of the rapid response from medical workers who had been alerted to the Ebola outbreak ravaging West Africa and trained in how to respond.

They also said it was unlikely the man had the disease. “Odds are this is not Ebola,” Jeremy Boal, Mount Sinai’s chief medical officer, said at a news conference. “It’s much more likely a more common condition.”

When the patient arrived at the emergency room early Monday with a high fever and gastrointestinal problems and told doctors he had been in West Africa, he was immediately quarantined in accordance with guidelines from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Los Angeles Times