Ebola nurse released from NIH

An American nurse who was exposed to Ebola while volunteering to treat patients in Sierra Leone has been released from the hospital at National Institutes of Health after displaying no symptoms of the disease since being admitted last Thursday.

The nurse will complete her 21 days of post-exposure monitoring at a private residence in Virginia, where the state’s Department of Health will follow CDC guidelines mandating regular temperature and symptom screenings.

But, according to NIH, the nurse “feels well and has no fever” and is displaying “no clinical or laboratory evidence of Ebola infection.”

Ebola heath care workers were named as Time Magazine’s persons of the year in 2014, and the White House has heralded that decision.

“I can’t think of a better choice, because the courage, skill, professionalism that they display every single day makes me very proud,” President Obama said earlier this month. 

The administration has also touted the additional Ebola funding in the $1.1 trillion government funding bill signed by Obama this week as a policy win.

The president said the funding would be “making sure that our hospitals are properly prepared, that our outstanding health workers are properly trained, and that we have facilities that are regionally dispersed to accommodate the periodic Ebola cases that we may continue to see in the United States until we eradicate the disease in West Africa.” 

Obama also noted the bill included funding for work on an Ebola vaccine being carried out at NIH.