Alabama Home Quarantined for Possible Ebola Case

A home in Alabama has been quarantined for a possible Ebola case after a patient visited a local hospital exhibiting symptoms congruent with the disease.

Edward Khan, medical director for the Jefferson County Health Department, has said that the patient in question had recently traveled to countries where the Ebola virus was present, but did not have any direct contact with infected persons, therefore making the patient's case "low risk."

"We notified the proper agencies to have this person evaluated and they're currently under evaluation right now to find out what they have," Kahn told the local WVTM 13 media outlet. "Very often, they may have something else, another disease. Could be malaria or hepatitis or gastroenteritis or so many other things. So he's currently undergoing tests now."

According to local media outlets, six firefighters and two family members of the patient have also been quarantined for possible exposure to the virus.

In his statement, Khan also elaborated on the meaning of a "low-risk" case, saying the patient "did not come into contact with any known Ebola cases while over there, and they didn't participate in any high-risk activities such as burial ceremonies or health care work."

Health officials have recently been hopeful that the Ebola outbreak of 2014 that claimed thousands of lives in parts of West Africa is coming to an end after the invention of a vaccine that has had a 100 percent success rate when tested on patients in Guinea.