Ebola: Doctor cured in New York

Health officials in New York announced on Monday that an American doctor treated for Ebola has recovered and will be released on Tuesday.

"After a rigorous course of treatment and testing, Dr. Craig Spencer - the patient admitted and diagnosed with Ebola...at HHC Bellevue Hospital Center - has been declared free of the virus," said the mayor's office.

Thirty-three-year-old Spencer was diagnosed with the deadly virus on October 23 after returning from a mission with Doctors Without Borders in Guinea. He was treated in an isolation unit at Bellevue Hospital in New York City.

His condition was upgraded from serious to stable last week. His fiancee and two friends were placed under quarantine but have since been released and are now being monitored.

Mandatory quarantine

Spencer was the fourth person to have tested positive for Ebola in the United States. News of his infection prompted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo along with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to implement a mandatory 21-day quarantine for people returning to the US who have had close contact with Ebola patients. The maximum incubation period for Ebola is 21 days.

Fearing an outbreak on US soil, various other states have followed suit and also imposed mandatory quarantines on travelers returning from West Africa. Critics, however, say a mandatory quarantine is far too cautious, as only people with symptoms are contagious.

Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at the end of October that close monitoring of those deemed at risk would suffice. Such monitoring included daily health checks based on a checklist of potential symptoms.

"That, we think, is good sound public health policy," he told reporters.

"We are concerned about some policies that we have seen in various places that might have the effect of increasing stigma or creating false impressions. You don't catch Ebola from someone who is not sick," he added.

Experts also believe such quarantines could deter US health workers from heading to the frontlines of the Ebola outbreak. Warning against "fear, hysteria and misinformation," US President Barack Obama at the end of October applauded health workers helping to fight the epidemic in Africa.

"We need to call them what they are, which is American heroes," he said. "They deserve our gratitude, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect."

Obama also defended guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Quarantine 'inhumane'

The first person to be quarantined under the new rules was Kaci Hickox, a nurse who had worked with Ebola patients in West Africa. She was initially placed under mandatory quarantine at a New Jersey hospital upon her arrival in Newark Airport before being transferred to her home state of Maine, where she was quarantined at her home.

She described her placement in an isolation tent upon arrival in New Jersey as "inhumane" and "completely unacceptable."

Meanwhile, a missionary doctor was placed under a 21-day quarantine in North Carolina on Monday, Reuters news agency reported. Fifty-two-year-old Dr. John Fankhauser returned to the US after a mission in Liberia and had not shown any signs of infection, officials said.

The World Health Organization estimates that around 5,000 people have died of Ebola in West Africa since the latest outbreak in February this year, the hardest hit countries being Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Over 13,700 people have contracted the virus.

sb/lw (AP, AFP, Reuters)