Woman who traveled to West Africa being monitored for Ebola-like symptoms in Oregon

An unidentified woman who recently traveled to West Africa is being monitored for Ebola-like symptoms in Oregon, health officials said Friday.

The woman was taken to Providence-Milwaukie Hospital, located just outside of Portland, after she presented a fever of more than 102 degrees on Friday morning, said Julie Sullivan-Springhetti, a spokeswoman for the Multnomah County Health Department.

Sullivan-Springhetti told The Los Angeles Times that the woman had been monitored since returning from West Africa, and had flown through one of the five airports being used to screen travelers re-entering the U.S. from the three countries hit hardest by the Ebola outbreak.

The woman had been checking her temperature twice each day and had not presented symptoms until Friday, officials said. Sullivan-Springhetti would not say where exactly the woman had traveled from, except that she had been in either Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone.

It was not immediately clear when the woman had returned to the U.S.

The patient is not an Oregon resident. She had been staying in a household in the Portland area, and Sullivan-Springhetti said health officials are monitoring those she had contact with on Friday after she became symptomatic.

Health officials would not say how many people are being monitored or say where exactly she had been staying.

“Every potential contact is being monitored by public health officials,” she said. “There is no risk to the public because you have to have symptoms. This was the first symptom she described … she had not been out.”

In a statement, the Oregon Health Authority said the patient did not present any risk to the public.

The woman was taken to Providence-Milwaukie Hospital in an ambulance designed to transport patients with highly contagious diseases, Sullivan-Springhetti said.

John Turner, a spokesman for the federal Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, said the CDC is aware of the incident. He was not sure whether a CDC Ebola team had been dispatched to Oregon.

Several cases of Ebola have been treated in the U.S. in recent months, and nearly all of the patients have been healthcare workers who treated victims of the deadly outbreak that has claimed nearly 5,000 lives in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia since March.

Two American nurses, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, also contracted the virus after treating Thomas Eric Duncan, a 42-year-old Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas earlier this month.

Both Pham and Vinson have fully recovered and were released from hospitals in recent days.

Dr. Craig Spencer, who had been volunteering for the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders in Guinea, was also diagnosed with the virus last week and remains hospitalized in New York City.

Earlier in the week, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber told reporters that six medical facilities in the state have been prepared to function as “regional reception centers” for people who test positive, or could test positive, for the Ebola virus.

“Local health departments, hospitals, healthcare providers, and first responders have been working together to ensure the state is prepared, and earlier this week, health officials and I outlined protocols for just this type of situation,” Kitzhaber said in a statement released Friday. “The protocols are intended to both protect the health and safety of Oregonians and get people the care they need.”

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