Mobile Health Officials Rule Out Ebola After Woman Hospitalized With Symptoms

A woman transported to USA Medical Center in Mobile after showing symptoms consistent with Ebola has been cleared of the virus, according to hospital and county health officials.

The woman first sought care at the Mobile County Health Department, presenting with gastrointestinal symptoms similar to those associated with Ebola. According to Mobile Fire-Rescue’s Steve Huffman, officials were told the woman may have had family members who had recently visited the Congo region, prompting immediate caution given the heightened global concern over Ebola at the time.

Mobile County Health Department spokesperson Casandra Andrews said the patient reported having been in contact with individuals who had traveled from the Republic of Congo more than 45 days earlier, a detail that factored into the decision to treat her case with extra care despite the low likelihood of actual infection.

Mobile County Health Department Director Bernard Eichold told local media that the patient had an “extremely low probability” of having Ebola and notably did not have a fever, one of the disease’s hallmark symptoms. Even so, health officials decided around 4 p.m. that day that the woman needed specialty evaluation at a hospital equipped to handle a potential case.

“Our team felt she needed to have specialty evaluation,” Eichold said, adding that he commended the response from fire-rescue and emergency personnel involved in the transport.

Out of an abundance of caution, Mobile Fire-Rescue crews wore full protective equipment while transporting the woman to USA Medical Center. The ambulance used for the transport was cleaned and sealed afterward as an added precaution. The woman herself was able to walk into the hospital’s emergency room wearing a protective mask and was described by officials as not being in acute distress from her symptoms.

USA Medical Center had spent the preceding week training staff specifically in the event that a possible Ebola case arrived at the facility, part of a broader statewide and national push by hospitals to prepare for the virus amid international concern following outbreaks in West Africa earlier that year.

Why officials considered the risk low

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ebola has an incubation period of 2 to 21 days, and a person who has not developed symptoms within 21 days of an exposure is not considered at risk from that exposure. The virus spreads through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of a person who is sick with Ebola.

The 2014 epidemic was centered in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone; the Republic of Congo, where the travelers the woman reported contact with had come from, is in central Africa.