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Dallas Nurse Nina Pham, Now 'Ebola Free,' To Be Discharged Today

Nina Pham, 26, who became the first person to contract Ebola within the United States, is set to be released after testing free of the virus.
Uncredited AP
Nina Pham, 26, who became the first person to contract Ebola within the United States, is set to be released after testing free of the virus.

Dallas Nurse Nina Pham, who contracted Ebola while treating patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who later died of the disease, is now free of the virus and will be discharged form a special facility at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, the NIH says.

Pham's release, scheduled for 11:30 a.m. ET, comes just a day after fellow nurse Amber Vinson's family said she had been declared free of the virus and Dr. Craig Spencer, a physician who had treated Ebola patients in Guinea while working for Doctors Without Borders, was said to have the potentially deadly virus.

A news briefing at the NIH to announce Pham's discharge will be livestreamed here.

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Last week, Pham appeared in a video in her isolation ward at Dallas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where she worked and caught the disease from Thomas Eric Duncan, who later died. In the video, apparently shot just before she was transferred to the NIH facility, she appeared in good spirits.

The cases of Pham and Vinson, who also became infected at Dallas Health Presbyterian, caused the hospital and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to review and upgrade their safety protocols for dealing with Ebola patients.

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