A New York City hospital says it's performing Ebola tests on a patient who recently traveled to West Africa.

Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan says a male patient with a high fever and gastrointestinal symptoms came in Monday. The hospital says it placed him in strict isolation and he's undergoing medical screenings.

Officials at U.S. airports are watching travelers from Africa for flu-like symptoms that could be tied to the recent Ebola outbreak there.

The Ebola virus causes a hemorrhagic fever that has sickened more than 1,600 people, killing nearly 900 mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. It's spread through direct contact with bodily fluids.

A spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says at least three Americans have been tested in the U.S. He says all three tested negative.

Meantime, the Liberia airport authority says a chartered evacuation plane that will take home the second American sick with Ebola has landed at the airport in the capital.
Binyah Kesselly, the chairman of the Liberia Airport Authority's board of directors, told The Associated Press that the plane arrived late Monday afternoon in Monrovia.

It is scheduled to take off early Tuesday with American missionary Nancy Writebol aboard. Writebol, a long-time missionary from North Carolina, will be treated at the same Atlanta hospital where an American doctor has been taken.

Writebol's son, Jeremy, said his mother ``is still struggling'' but that ``there seems to be improvement'' and that the family is optimistic she will recover amid a spreading Ebola outbreak.

Ebola has killed at least 887 people in four West African countries.

 

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