American Healthcare Worker With Ebola in Critical Condition at NIH

An American healthcare worker infected with Ebola has been downgraded from serious to critical condition, hospital officials announced Monday.

The patient was flown in isolation on a charter flight  from Sierra Leone last week and was admitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, Friday morning.

The agency said in a statement Monday that the patient's status was changed from serious condition to critical condition, meaning his or her condition has apparently worsened.

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The patient, a clinician working with Partners in Health, a Boston-based nonprofit, had been volunteering at an Ebola treatment unit in Sierra Leone when he or she contracted the disease.

The patient's name, age and gender have not been released. No further details about the patient's condition were released.

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The NIH Clinical Center's Special Clinical Studies Unit (SCSU) is designed for high-level isolation capabilities and is staffed by specialists in infectious diseases and critical care, the NIH said.

The patient is the second to be treated for Ebola at NIH. Last fall, Texas nurse Nina Pham was treated there after contracting the disease while treating the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S.

The NIH has also cared for two other people who had high-risk exposures to Ebola, but were later determined to not be infected.

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A Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention spokesman said that besides the patient currently at NIH, there are 11 other Partners in Health workers being brought to the United States for monitoring.

That includes three others who arrived in the Washington area Sunday to be near the NIH campus in Bethesda. Those workers did not contract Ebola but may have been exposed.

The NIH said it has no other pending admissions of additional patients with the Ebola virus or who have been exposed to Ebola.

CDC workers in Sierra Leone are involved in investigating the illness of the first patient, including looking for other people the person was in contact with. It's possible other people will be transported to the United States for monitoring, said spokesman Tom Skinner.