Condition of NBC cameraman with Ebola continues to improve

The condition of the NBC cameraman who contracted Ebola while covering the deadly viral outbreak in West Africa has improved, hospital officials said Saturday.

Ashoka Mukpo, the 33-year-old journalist who had worked for VICE News and NBC News in Liberia, where he contracted the virus earlier this month, “is still very weak, but his condition has improved” since Friday, said Dr. Phil Smith, director of the biocontainment unit at Nebraska Medical Center.

The outbreak in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea has killed more than 4,000 people since March, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history.

Mukpo was flown to Nebraska after he tested positive for the virus on Oct. 1. He has received a blood transfusion from Dr. Kent Brantly, an American aid worker who contracted the virus earlier this year and was one of the first Ebola patients to be treated in the U.S. Mukpo also has received the experimental drug brincidofovir.

“He’s eating some solid food now, so we’re still headed in the right direction,” Smith said in a statement. “However, he is still extremely weak, and the severity and unknown aspects of the disease we’re dealing with always have to be kept in mind.”

Mukpo was working with the network’s medical director, Dr. Nancy Snyderman. Snyderman and her crew were also flown back to the U.S. and placed themselves under a 21-day quarantine because they had been in contact with Mukpo.

Though none of the crew members has displayed symptoms of the virus since returning, New Jersey health officials issued a mandatory quarantine for the crew members on Friday, according to the Associated Press.

The crew has been under quarantine for 10 days, and it is not clear why the order was issued or if any crew members violated the voluntary quarantine, according to the report.

News of Mukpo’s improving condition came as John. F Kennedy International Airport in New York City became the first of five ports of entry in the U.S. to require visitors from the West African countries ravaged by the outbreak to go through enhanced screenings before entering the U.S.

The enhanced screenings begin at some airports in Newark, N.J.; Atlanta; Chicago; and Dulles, Va. in the next few weeks.

On Wednesday, the first person diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil, Thomas Eric Duncan, died of the disease at a hospital in Dallas.

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