MOSCOW, October 26 (RIA Novosti) - Dr. Craig Spencer, the New Yorker who treated patients with Ebola in Guinea, has entered the next phase of the illness, prior to which he received a blood donation from another US patient who recovered, alongside antiviral therapies, NBC reported Sunday.
"People tend to get worse before they get better with this [Ebola] disease, so he remains in stable condition, but we are aware that this is the natural course of this disease," health commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said in a press conference aired on NBC news, assuring the public that Spencer was expected to recover.
According to the news outlet, Spencer on Saturday received a plasma transfusion from US Ebola survivor, Nancy Writebol, who also contracted the disease while treating patients in West Africa in August.
Spencer is currently at an isolation unit at the Bellevue Hospital while his fiancé and two close friends are in quarantine until November 4. However, they have not displayed any symptoms of the virus and therefore it is a precautionary measure.
In other news, authorities are urging people to avoid Ebola-hysteria. The mayor and other New York city officials had a meal at a restaurant that Spencer had visited before he was confirmed to have contracted Ebola.
"It is a rare instance in which Ebola is transmitted. It requires, bluntly, intimate contact," the city mayor Bill Blasio said at the press conference, which took place outside the restaurant.
The latest World Health Organization (WHO) case count, released Saturday, indicated that a total of 10,141 confirmed, probable and suspected cases have been reported so far. The Ebola virus has caused 4,922 deaths, with the hardest hit West African countries - Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea accounting for 4,912 of the deaths.
Among the reported cases, 244 of the 450 infected health care workers have died; three in the United States.
