Update: A patient who was tested for Ebola does not have the virus, the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department announced Monday morning. The traveler had been in an African country where Ebola is epidemic and “extra precautions were taken” after she became ill, the department said.
A Santa Barbara County resident possibly contracted the Ebola virus overseas and was being transported Sunday night to a Los Angeles-area hospital for close monitoring, public health officials said.
The person — whose identity was not released — developed a fever and showed other symptoms of sickness during a 21-day-long Ebola screening program run by the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department, said department spokeswoman Susan Klein-Rothschild.
The program monitors those who have returned from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three countries that currently have widespread Ebola epidemics.
The possibility of an Ebola infection is “highly unlikely,” Klein-Rothschild said. County health officials counseled the state department of public health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention before deciding to “take all precautionary measures,” Klein-Rothschild said.
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