A doctor who recently returned to New York from treating Ebola patients in Guinea has tested positive for the deadly virus, the first confirmed case in the United States' largest city.
The doctor, Craig Spencer, was placed in isolation at Manhattan's Bellevue Hospital Center earlier on Thursday after suffering Ebola symptoms including a 39.4-Celsius fever and nausea.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio confirmed Spencer's positive test at a late-night press conference, but urged residents not to panic, insisting the city was fully prepared to stop the disease in its tracks.
"We want to state at the outset, (this) is no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed. Ebola is an extremely hard disease to contract. It is transmitted only through contact with an infected person's blood or other bodily fluids," said de Blasio.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said city officials had already identified four people believed to have crossed paths with Spencer, and said he didn't expect a repeat of the situation in Dallas, where hospital staff appeared to have been caught off-guard by the arrival of the disease that has killed almost 4900 people in West Africa.
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"Dallas was caught before they could really prepare. We had the advantage of learning from their experience," he said.
New York Health Commissioner Mary Travis Bassett said Spencer - who was working in West Africa for the charity Doctors Without Borders - had arrived back in the US from Guinea on October 17.
The doctor had monitored his temperature regularly since his return. His first sign of Ebola symptoms came on Thursday with his fever.
Confirmation of the New York case came just hours after Mali reported its first confirmed case of the disease, when a two-year-old girl who had recently been in Guinea tested positive for the virus.
The child and those she has come into contact with have been put in isolation.
The New York and Mali cases came after African countries pledged to send more than 1000 health workers to Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, where the World Health Organization says the spread of the killer virus "remains of great concern".
