The patient, who officials said was not showing symptoms of infection, was expected to arrive in Omaha aboard a private air ambulance on Sunday around 2 p.m. Central time, the University of Nebraska Medical Center said in a news release.
The patient will be taken to the hospital’s Biocontainment Patient Care Unit for three weeks of observation, a hospital official said.
“This patient has been exposed to the virus but is not ill and is not contagious,” said Dr. Philip Smith, the medical director of the biocontainment unit. “However, we will be taking all appropriate precautions.”
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A villager on a path used to cross between Sierra Leone and Guinea. Relatively unfettered passage among those countries and Liberia has contributed to an Ebola outbreak.
How Ebola Roared BackDEC. 29, 2014
The hospital has treated three patients who contracted Ebola overseas. Dr. Rick Sacra, a missionary physician who contracted the virus while working in Monrovia, Liberia, was treated for three weeks and released in September.
Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance cameraman for NBC News, who fell ill while also working in Monrovia, was treated and released in October.
The third patient, Dr. Martin Salia, a surgeon and a United States permanent resident, contracted the disease in his native Sierra Leone. He was gravely ill when he arrived in November and died after two days of treatment, the hospital said.
The new patient will be monitored for Ebola in the same room used for treatment of the first three patients, Dr. Smith said.
The current outbreak of Ebola has killed nearly 8,000 people worldwide, mostly in the West African nations Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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