Nebraska hospital releases 5 Americans found Ebola-free

Five American health workers have been released from a Nebraska hospital after completing a 21-day quarantine and being found Ebola-free.

{mosads}The Nebraska Medical Center, which specializes in treating highly infectious diseases, announced the five workers’ release on Twitter. They had been flown back from Sierra Leone in March and monitored after a different American health worker there contracted Ebola. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traced the contacts of the worker who contracted Ebola and identified people who would be flown back to the U.S. for monitoring to see if they developed symptoms. Nearly 20 have been flown back so far. 

The worker with Ebola is still being treated at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. The patient’s condition was upgraded to “fair” on Monday after previously being in “critical” and then “serious” condition.

No details have been released about the patient other than that he or she was working for the Boston-based group Partners in Health in Sierra Leone.

More than 10,000 people have died from Ebola, and nearly all of the victims lived in Sierra Leone, Liberia or Guinea, according to the World Health Organization. 

The worst of the disease seems to have passed, though. President Obama said in February that the U.S. had “risen to the challenge” of Ebola and that all but 100 of the 2,800 U.S. troops sent to West Africa to fight the disease would return home by the end of April.