Infected doctor brings Ebola panic to NY City
Physician rides subway before testing positive for virus
BOLA panic is swarming New York City as it emerged infected doctor Craig Spencer rode the subway, visited a crowded bowling rink and took an Uber cab just one day before he was rushed to the hospital with a temperature of 39
The Doctors Without Borders physician tested positive for the deadly virus six days after retur ning from Guinea where he was treating patients.
But it has emerged that instead of steering clear of crowds, the 33-year-old medic took the subway from Harlem to Williamsburg, where he visited The Gutter rink, before taking an Uber cab home.
Earlier that day, he went on a jog and took the subway to the High Line garden – a popular tourist destination – before eating out at a restaurant.
This means that residents in at least two dense New York City suburbs could have been exposed: Williamsburg and Harlem, where Spencer lives.
New Yorkers have flooded Twitter in panic revealing their fears after visiting the bowling alley and taking the subway at the same time.
One exclaimed: “He took the subway from Harlem to Brooklyn? You literally have to go through the entire city subway system to do that.”
Health officials confirmed he visited The Gutter, which has tonight closed its doors.
A panel briefing reporters on the diagnosis added that Spencer rode the subway from north-west Manhattan to
EBrooklyn on Thursday night.
He took the A train from 147th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue down the west side of Manhattan.
He then switched to the L train, which travels in a straight horizontal line across the island and under the East River into Brooklyn.
Three people who had close contact with the physician were quarantined for observation – one of them, his fiancée, at the same hospital – but all were still healthy, officials said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gover nor Andrew Cuomo sought to reassure New Yorkers they were safe.
“There is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed,” de Blasio said at a news conference at Bellevue.
“Being on the same subway car or living near someone with Ebola does not in itself put someone at risk.”
Cuomo said that unlike in Dallas, where two hospital nurses treating an Ebola pa- tient contracted the disease, New York officials had time to thoroughly prepare and practise for the possibility of a case emerging in the city.
“From a public health point of view, I feel confident we’re doing everything we should be doing, and we have the situation under control,” he said.
US stock index futures dipped yesterday, with the benchmark S&P 500 index down 0.3 percent, as the first diagnosed case of Ebola in New York City raised concer ns about the spread of the virus in the nation’s most populous city.
The worst Ebola outbreak on record has killed at least 4 877 people and perhaps as many as 15 000, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to World Health Organisation figures.
Four cases have been diagnosed so far in the US: Liberian Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on October 8 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, two nurses who treated him there, and Spencer.
Health officials emphasised that the virus is not airborne but is spread through direct contact with bodily fluids from an infected person.
“We consider that it is extremely unlikely, the probability being close to nil, that there would be any problem related to his taking the subway system,” Bassett said.
President Barack Obama was briefed about the New York Ebola case and spoke by telephone separately on Thursday night to Cuomo and de Blasio, the White House said. – Daily Mail and Reuters