NEW YORK — The nation's most emblematic big city is coming to grips with Ebola as a doctor who tested positive for the deadly virus remained in hospital isolation Saturday while officials traced his recent travels, quarantined his fiancée and close friends and sought to tamp down health concerns.
Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old emergency physician, was being treated in an isolation unit at Bellevue Hospital Center after being rushed to the Manhattan trauma center Thursday when he reported a high fever and diarrhea, which are among Ebola's symptoms.
Spencer, also a volunteer for international health care group Doctors without Borders,returned less than a week ago from Guinea, one of the three countries in West Africa hardest hit by an outbreak of Ebola. The epidemic there has killed about 4,800 people. More than 440 health workers there have contracted the disease, and about half have died.
"There is no cause for alarm," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said during a Friday afternoon news conference where he indicated no additional Ebola cases had been reported in the city's five boroughs.
"There is no reason for New Yorkers to change their routines in any way," added de Blasio.
Even without the explicit statement from his employer, Craig
Spencer's recent journeys to desperately under-served populations in Africa
would confirm the description of him as a "dedicated humanitarian."
It was his similar dedication to the Ebola-ravaged nation of
Guinea, as a volunteer for Doctors Without Borders, that led this 33-year-old
New York Presbyterian Hospital doctor to test positive for the virus on
Thursday.
In 2013, Spencer, a native of Grosse Pointe, Mich., took up
a fellowship in international emergency medicine at New York
Presbyterian/Columbia that specializes in sending physicians to work in
post-conflict and post-disaster areas.
According to the fellowship's website, his works in Africa
included helping develop an emergency care teaching curriculum in Rwanda,
assisting in a mortality survey in southern Burundi, and helping set up a
pregnancy monitoring surveillance program.
Spencer, who was placed in isolation at Bellevue Hospital
Thursday, kept his mission in the forefront last month in a Facebook entry,
complete with his photo in full protective gear, about his upcoming trip to
West Africa.
An employee from Bio Recovery Corporation on Oct. 24, 2014
carries a blue barrel into the New York City apartment building of Dr. Craig
Spencer, who has tested positive for Ebola.(Photo: Bryan Thomas, Getty Images)
"Off to Guinea with Doctors Without Borders," he
wrote. "Please support organizations that are sending support or personnel
to West Africa, and help combat one of the worst public health and humanitarian
disasters in recent history."
He returned from West Africa 10 days ago, but refrained from
seeing any of New York patients until the 21-day Ebola incubation period had
passed.
Spencer was long stepped in public service. After getting
his medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit,
he earned a Master of Public Health degree at Columbia University's Mailman
School of Public Health.
Kate Calabresa Murray, principal at Grosse Pointe North High
School, says everyone remembers the 1999 graduate "because of his selfless
leadership
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