WASHINGTON, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – US President Barack Obama has been informed of the first Ebola case diagnosed in the country, the White House said Tuesday evening.
"The President has been briefed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Tom Frieden about the recently-diagnosed case of Ebola in Dallas, Texas," the press service said.
Earlier in the day, CDC confirmed the patient hospitalized in the state of Texas has tested positive for the deadly Ebola virus.
The unnamed man has traveled to West Africa and developed the Ebola symptoms approximately five days after returning to the United States on September 20.
The patient is hospitalized in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.
The current outbreak of Ebola, worst yet, started in southern Guinea at the end of 2013 and consequently spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Senegal. A separate outbreak, unrelated to the one in West Africa, is taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
There is no officially approved medication for the Ebola virus as of now, although such countries as Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Japan, are currently working on vaccines.
The death toll in the Ebola epidemic is currently climbing to 3,000. World Health Organization (WHO) projects 20,000 new cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in West Africa by November.
