At least 15 Americans were exposed
to Ebola from a single, infected U.S. healthcare worker and have been
brought back to the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention said Tuesday.
They all work for Partners in Health, a nonprofit group that's been helping fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.
Over the weekend,
Partners in Health said 10 of its staffers might have been exposed to
the often deadly virus when they were trying to help the patient — who
hasn't been identified and who's in critical condition at the National
Institutes of Health outside Washington, D.C.
Now, another four have
been identified and are being brought back for observation. So far, only
one person, the first patient, has tested positive for Ebola symptoms.
It's not clear how so many people got exposed to the virus.
"We're still
investigating and hopefully we'll have an answer to that question," said
CDC spokesman Tom Skinner. "The circumstances around all these
exposures is what we are looking at right now. "
Ebola's infected more
than 24,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and killed more
than 10,000 of them. The patient at NIH is the 11th to be treated in the
United States.
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