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An American doctor exposed to Ebola while in Sierra Leone has been flown to the United States. The doctor was flown to a regional airport in the eastern state of Maryland Sunday and walked off the plane wearing a white protective suit. The infectious disease chief at the NIH near Washington would not discuss details about the patient, but said that in general, an exposure to Ebola doesn't necessarily mean someone will become sick.

According to CDC director Tom Frieden, the ‘window of opportunity’ for stopping the spread of Ebola is closing rapidly. In July, as the virus surged across west African borders, Frieden downplayed its potential to reach U.S. shores. “It is not a potential of Ebola spreading widely in the U.S.,” claimed Frieden in a preemptive effort to prevent panic. “That is not in the cards.” The cards, apparently, have been reshuffled, as Frieden now joins a growing chorus of concerned officials around the world. “This is not just a problem for West Africa, it’s not just a problem for Africa,” Frieden...

An undisclosed number of people who’ve been exposed to the Ebola virus — not just the four patients publicly identified with diagnosed cases — have been evacuated to the U.S. by an air ambulance company contracted by the State Department. “We moved a lot of other people who had an exposure event,” said Dent Thompson, vice president of Phoenix Air Group. “Many times these people are just fine, they just had an exposure. But you have to treat it as though the disease is present.” How many exposed patients have been flown from West Africa to the U.S.? Thompson said...

Vespignani has analyzed the likelihood that Ebola will spread to other countries. Using data on millions of air travelers and commuters, as well as mobility patterns based on data from censuses and mobile devices, he has built a model of the world, into which he can introduce Ebola and then run hundreds of thousands of simulations. In general, the chance of further spread beyond West Africa is small, Vespignani says, but the risk grows with the scale of the epidemic. Ghana, the United Kingdom, and the United States are among the countries most likely to have an introduced case, according...

Thursday at the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health hearing titled, “Combating the Ebola Threat,” the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Tom Frieden said "We are all connected and inevitably there will be travelers, American citizens" who will travel in the infected African countries and come "here with symptoms."He added, "It is certainly possible that we could have ill people in the US who develop Ebola after having been exposed elsewhere."

An American doctor in serious condition after he contracted Ebola was on a specially outfitted plane on the way to the U.S. for treatment Saturday morning, the organization Samaritan's Purse told NBC News. Dr. Kent Brantly — the first person infected with Ebola to be transported to the U.S. — will land at Dobbins Air Force Base in Marietta, Georgia, before he is transported to Emory Hospital in Atlanta.