Nina Pham, the first American nurse to contract Ebola from a patient, is being moved to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hospital in Bethesda, Maryland on Thursday, the National Institute of Health’s Dr. Anthony Fauci told Congress the same day, NBC News reports.
Pham was the first American to contract Ebola after treating Thomas Duncan, the first case in the country. A week after her initial diagnosis, Pham has remained at Dallas hospital where she contracted the disease for treatment.
The second nurse diagnosed with Ebola, Amber Vinson, was moved to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta on Wednesday. Emory and the NIH hospital at Bethesda are two of just four hospitals in the United States that are specially equipped to handle Ebola patients.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has insisted that any U.S. hospital are capable of handling Ebola patients.
Daniel Varga, head of the Dallas hospital system that treated Duncan and Pham, apologized Wednesday in written testimony to a congressional committee for the hospital’s failure to diagnosis Duncan when he first sought treatment.
“In our initial treatment of Mr. Duncan, despite our best intentions and a highly skilled medical team, we made mistakes,” Varga said. “We are deeply sorry.”
Varga insisted that Pham followed CDC protocols when treating Duncan but said the hospital still doesn’t know how she was infected.