UPDATE: Bellevue Hospital officials issued a statement on Wednesday at 4:20 p.m. saying "an alternative diagnosis was made and Ebola has been ruled out."

Original story: A person with symptoms that "meet the criteria" for the deadly Ebola virus was transported Wednesday to Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital Center, a spokesman with the Fire Department of New York said.

"Our EMS units in the field picked up a patient and they met the criteria for fever travel," the spokesman, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter, said in an interview with Patch. The person transported had recently traveled abroad, fire officials say, and was showing signs of fever and other symptoms associated with Ebola.

The NYC Department of Health (DOH) said in a statement that the individual "recently returned from Guinea and is experiencing illness."

The DOH, in collaboration with the city's Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC), will "evaluate the patient to determine if an Ebola test is required and evaluate for other causes of illness," said the statement, also disseminated by the Bellevue press office.



The fire department was standing by on Wednesday afternoon at Bellevue with a number of different units, including Hazmat teams and squad cars, in accordance with an Ebola protocol put in place one year ago, during the massive West Africa outbreak. (During that time, Bellevue was reportedly chosen as the go-to hospital for persons with Ebola symptoms.)

The last reported Ebola case in New York City — and the U.S. — was in October 2014, at the height of international Ebola paranoia. In that case, Craig Spencer, a medical aid worker who volunteered in Guinea, was treated — and cured — at Bellevue.

Ebola spreads from person to person through direct contact with bodily fluids, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A spokesperson for the CDC told Patch on Wednesday afternoon that New York state officials have not yet requested help from CDC's special Ebola response team [PDF].

