Ebola Ruled Out for Hawaii Patient

A magnified view of the Ebola virus particles (in red) on the surface of a cell (in blue). (Image credit: CDC/ NIAID)

Health officials in Hawaii say that a man hospitalized in isolation is no longer being looked at as a possible case of Ebola.

The patient was being treated at a hospital in Honolulu and was reported to the state's health department as a possible case of Ebola. Officials launched an investigation into the cause of the patient's condition. Ebola was one possibility, they said yesterday.

However, further investigations revealed the patient does need to be tested for Ebola -- he did not have the clinical symptoms or recent travels to West Africa where there is an ongoing outbreak of Ebola, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health Dr. Linda Rosen said in a news release.

Hospitals in the United States are advised to isolate and report patients who have fever and have recently travelled to Ebola-affected countries, such as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Email Bahar Gholipour. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science.

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Bahar Gholipour is a staff reporter for Live Science covering neuroscience, odd medical cases and all things health. She holds a Master of Science degree in neuroscience from the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, and has done graduate-level work in science journalism at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has worked as a research assistant at the Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives at ENS.