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Emergency workers in hazmat gear visited a Baltimore neighborhood Sunday to transport a person showing Ebola-like symptoms to Johns Hopkins Hospital for testing, city officials said. “The testing is being done out of an abundance of caution,” Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen said in a statement. “All protocols have been followed for safe transport of the patient and the system is working as intended. There is no danger to the public at large.” The person was collected by emergency personnel wearing hazmat gear near the intersection of West North Avenue and Maryland Avenue around midday Sunday, according to a police...

Toronto hospital testing recent traveller to West Africa for EbolaTORONTO – A person who recently travelled in West Africa is being assessed in a Toronto hospital to see if she has Ebola. But an infectious diseases expert at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre says the likelihood the person will test positive for the ...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)An American health worker exposed to the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone arrived in Omaha Sunday afternoon and is now being monitored at Nebraska Medicine. Paramedics wearing full-body protective gear took the patient, who has not been identified, by ambulance from a plane that arrived at Eppley Airfield around 1:45 p.m. to the hospital, which has a specialized biocontainment unit. "I can't comment on if the patient does or doesn't have any kind of symptoms at this point, but I can say the crew inside the biocontainment unit, the crew that received the patient at the airport, is...

<p>The Food and Drug Administration has granted emergency approval for a new diagnostic kit to test blood for the deadly Ebola virus, even as doctors are reporting a survival rate in one hard-hit area that has climbed to about 70 percent.</p>

Hoping to tamp down fears about Ebola, the Obama administration said Monday the virus wreaking havoc in West Africa is unlikely to mutate and spread by air. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a fact sheet that says samples from the current outbreak, which has killed about 5,000 abroad and elicited fear in the U.S., are nearly identical — 97 percent the same — as the strains studied when Ebola was discovered in 1976. Scientists monitoring the virus have not seen any evidence that Ebola may be mutating in a way that would make it spread more easily,...

(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at a White House event on Thursday to discuss the Obama administration’s response to the Ebola virus epidemic, Vice President Joe Biden said the United States should have a hospital that is capable of treating the disease in “every state of the Union.” A reporter from the Wall Street Journal quoted Biden in the pool press report, which is e-mailed to other reporters, after the vice president met with “leaders of faith, humanitarian, and non-governmental organizations that are responding to the Ebola crisis in West Africa and educating their communities about Ebola-related issues here at home,” according...

House Republicans have scheduled two more hearings on the U.S. response to Ebola, focusing on the health system's readiness for more cases and the development of cures and treatments. The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittees on Health and Oversight and Investigations will host the events on Tuesday and Wednesday. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden will appear at one to discuss training for U.S. health workers and other preventative measures against the virus's spread. "The threat of the Ebola outbreak is real and extends beyond its source in West Africa," said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred...

The quality of mercy is always strained, but snake oil comes raw and unfiltered, harvested from ever more lethal snakes. You might think the accounts of the suffering of those stricken with the Ebola virus would soften the hearts of snake-oil salesmen. But the more horrific the suffering, the more inspired the sales pitches. The con men are flooding the Internet and some homeopathic health stores with tonics and elixirs that boast of miraculous powers to prevent or cure sickness from the Ebola virus. The grim fact is that there is neither a preventative nor a cure. Josephine P. Briggs,...

A New York doctor being treated for Ebola has found another way to pass the time in a hospital isolation ward: He's playing his guitar, city health officials say. Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, has been in isolation at Bellevue Hospital since being diagnosed with Ebola last month. He's now listed in stable condition, and city officials said he continues to improve.... The New York-based emergency room doctor had been treating Ebola patients at a Doctors Without Borders medical center in Guinea when he was infected. He arrived back in the United States on Oct. 17 and was diagnosed with Ebola...

Louisiana is set to host one of the year’s biggest gatherings of infectious disease experts next week, but anyone's who's recently been to West Africa won’t be welcome.A pair of top state officials wrote a letter to the more than 3,500 members of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene who planned to attend the conference this week, warning them to stay away if they’ve had potential Ebola exposure.“In Louisiana, we love to welcome visitors, but we must balance that hospitality with the protection of Louisiana residents and other visitors,” wrote Kathy Klieber, Louisiana’s secretary of Health and Hospitals,...

On Monday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Thomas Frieden announced a new policy on health care workers returning from Ebola-plagued West Africa. Parroting President Obama’s Saturday radio address, Frieden cautioned that Americans must be “guided by the science,” not fear. Sorry. The Obama administration’s halfway approach is based on political correctness, not science. And it is a gamble. According to Frieden, about five health care workers fly back from West Africa to the U.S. every day, landing at Chicago, Newark, Atlanta, New York’s JFK or Dulles outside of Washington, D.C. For months, the CDC did almost nothing to...

Tuesday on "CBS This Morning," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) blamed Republicans for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa by suggesting funding cuts to certain programs were the culprit. "Instead of making those investments up front, we wait until people die," Warren said. "Of course I'm worried, but part of this reminds me -- this is why elections matter and why they matter over time. you know, Ebola is not new. We've known about it for a long time. We were putting money into funding Ebola many years ago and the republicans have cut funding overall for medical research, for the...

Ebola health care worker Kaci Hickox, who was released from quarantine with the support of the White House, is a Centers For Disease Control and Prevention employee, records reveal. The lawyer who helped earn her release is a recent White House state dinner guest.Hickox was released from Ebola quarantine in Newark, N.J., Monday afternoon after the White House pressured New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie to release the nurse that was working in Sierra Leone with Doctors Without Borders. Hickox’s case for release was also bolstered by New York civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, who took on Hickox’s case.“I feel like...

Dallas nurse Nina Pham was happily declared Ebola-free and released from the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., Friday. Just a few hours after she was released from the hospital, Pham, her mother, and her sister got to visit the Oval Office and meet the president. According to US News, the White House allowed only photographers to witness Obama's greeting of Pham. Mark Knoller ✔ @markknoller Follow Still photographers said they heard Pres Obama tell Nurse Nina Pham words to the effect of: let's give a hug for the cameras. 1:10 PM - 24 Oct 2014 532 RETWEETS 119...

The last people to hold Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan's hands to comfort him as he was dying at Dallas' Texas Presbyterian Hospital were his nurses, some of whom will appear on CBS' "60 Minutes" Sunday to explain how they tried to save the Liberian while risking their own lives. The nurses, John Mulligan, Krista Maxwell, Richard Townsend, and Sedia Rose, will explain the ordeal in their first media interviews following Duncan's death to 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley. The man was the first and only Ebola patient to die from the disease in the United States. "I was very...

President Obama is usually “not interested in photo ops,” but apparently he made an exception for Friday’s good news that Nina Pham, the first Dallas nurse who contracted Ebola, is now virus-free. Mr. Obama and Ms. Pham shared an embrace in the Oval Office, certainly a reassuring image for Ebola-panicked Americans. But according to still photographers on the scene, his hug with Ms. Pham was staged.

Craig Spencer, a 33-year-old doctor, is the first person found to have Ebola in New York City. Since Spencer was rushed to Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital on Thursday, immediately after showing symptoms, health officials have been retracing his steps and working to identify anyone the patient may have come into contact with since returning to the United States from Guinea on Oct. 17. As a member of Doctors Without Borders, Spencer had been treating Ebola patients in Guinea, one of the three West African countries hit hardest by the Ebola epidemic. At a news conference on Thursday night, Mayor Bill de...

"They are both registered Democrats with a history of working in public health. Both Spencer and Dixon are professional do gooders according to their LinkedIn and professional websites. Spencer boasts a degree from Columbia’s University Mailman School of Public Health, according to his since deleted LinkedIn page. So why did health care professionals decide to go bowling just days after Spencer returned from Ebola-infected Guinea?"

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com, One of the most dangerous philosophical contentions even amongst liberty movement activists is the conundrum of government force and prevention during times of imminent pandemic. All of us at one time or another have had this debate. If a legitimate viral threat existed and threatened to infect and kill millions of Americans, is it then acceptable for the government to step in, remove civil liberties, enforce quarantines, and stop people from spreading the disease? After all, during a viral event, the decisions of each individual can truly have a positive or negative effect on...

At least 4,877 people have died in the world's worst recorded outbreak of Ebola, and at least 9,936 cases of the disease had been recorded as of Oct. 19, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday, but the true toll may be three times as much. The WHO has said real numbers of cases are believed to be much higher than reported: by a factor of 1.5 in Guinea, 2 in Sierra Leone and 2.5 in Liberia, while the death rate is thought to be about 70 percent of all cases. That would suggest a toll of almost 15,000.