US has faced 68 Ebola scares in the last three weeks

According to the United States Center for Disease Control (CDC), 68 people have been tested for the deadly Ebola virus in the United States over the last three weeks. According to the CDC, the virus has already claimed the lives of more than 1,200 people in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leona, and Nigeria since the outbreak began.

However, despite recent scares, there hasn’t been a single confirmed case of Ebola in the United States. Two patients, who health officials have described as being very “low risk”, are currently being held in hospitals in New York and California while they await their official test results. There was a brief scare in Atlanta when a local man supposedly contracted the virus, but he was later reported to have tested negative for Ebola.

According to the World health Organization (WHO), the initial symptoms of Ebola can be muscle pain, headaches, high fever, sore throat, weakness, vomiting, and diarrhea. Other viruses that cause these symptoms include malaria, typhoid fever, meningitis, cholera, leptospirosis, relapsing fever, hepatitis, and rickettsiosis, all of which can range from mild viruses to life threatening diseases.

“If somebody had traveled to Guinea and came back and had a fever and has never been to a place where Ebola is transmitted, there’s no reason to suspect there’s Ebola just because Ebola is circulating in Guinea,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said, explaining that the CDC takes suspected cases seriously but has to narrow them down.

Read more about the story at ABC News.