The NY doctor who tested positive for Ebola has now entered the second and more serious phase after he experienced gastrointestinal problems, an official from the hospital where he is presently being treated announced on Sunday, October 26.
Craig Spencer came from Guinea where he worked for about a month with Doctors without Borders, treating Ebola patients in the region. On October 14, he officially left the Western African nation, traveling to the United States via Brussels, Belgium. By October 17, he arrived in New York. Up until his U.S. arrival, he didn't show any symptoms although he indicated in the questionnaire where he came from and what he did.
On October 23, he was finally admitted to Bellevue Hospital after he developed a low-grade fever, a condition he reported to Doctors without Borders. He also told the organization that he was feeling exhausted two days before.
Although his present condition is described as serious, it is also stable. The mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, had spoken with Spencer on Saturday, October 25, and described the patient as energetic. The hospital also mentioned that he's looking better, communicating and awake, and coping well with the treatments.
Spencer received a plasma treatment from one of the earliest U.S. Ebola survivors Nancy Writebol, who was flown in from West Africa after contracting the disease there. He also took an experimental drug called Brincidofovir. It's the same drug given to Ashoka Mukpo, the NBC News freelance cameraman who also contracted the virus while working in West Africa. It is not clear how the drug was procured or where it was flown in, although according to NY Daily News report, the health officials had immediately requested for it a few hours after the doctor was admitted to the hospital and tested positive for Ebola.
Meanwhile, a cleaning crew in full PPE has already disinfected his apartment. His fiancée, Morgan Dixon, who was also isolated in the same hospital, had left since Saturday and is now staying in their Hamilton Heights apartment for self-quarantine.
