Tuesday it was confirmed that the first case of ebola had entered the United States from West Africa. This was obviously a major sign of concern for the citizens of the United States; Thousands have already died from the disease and thousands more are infected and experiencing its effects in West Africa. 

More troubling it has been reported that they ebola patient, who is being treated in Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital by the CDC, is in critical condition and now under intensive care isolation. He flew in on United Airlines and made his way to the U.S. from Siberia after traveling for roughly eight days.

While it is important to stay up to date with the number of distressing details that this seem to be revealed about this disease daily, health officials agree that now is not the time for the U.S. to panic. The amount of state-of-the-art health care and technology that the Western world is privileged to have make the CDC confident that this will be an isolated incident and not a cause for panic.

Thankfully, the Ebola also can only be contracted through direct and usually prolonged contact with an infected individual and not through the air, another reason not to panic.

The single U.S. Ebola patient is apparently experiencing the onset symptoms of the disease, according to CNN. These symptoms include fever, loss of strength, muscle pain, headaches and sore throats. The problem that those in West Africa have faced is the difficulty of monitoring these symptoms; they can appear anywhere between 2 and 21 days after the disease has been contracted.

Symptoms

Symptoms of Ebola are similar to malaria, typhoid fever, meningitis or even the plague, which has led to a case of mistaken identity in several cases in West Africa.

As the disease progresses, so do the symptoms. Eventually vomiting, impaired kidney and liver functions along with internal and external bleeding often occur.

The only treatments that have been reported with the disease are primarily used to keeping it under control. These include hydrating the patient maintaing their blood pressure and oxygen to prevent further degradation to their bodies.

While the drug ZMapp was previously show to be effective, apparently curing the two American missionary workers who were infected with Ebola, it has not been properly tested. Administering such an untested drug on such a wide spread area could do more bad than good, fear CDC officials.