First diagnosed case of Ebola in the U.S.

It is official. Ebola has arrived to the U.S. A patient in Texas has been diagnosed with the deadly disease, the CDC confirmed on Tuesday. 

This is the very first Ebola case to be diagnosed in the United States. 

According to Forbes, the patient obtained the virus while traveling in Liberia, and started showing symptoms four days after his return. The man has been placed in strict isolation. 

In a briefing on Tuesday, CDC officials stressed that because the man was not symptomatic with Ebola while flying, there was “zero risk” of transmission for other passengers on the plane. They also vowed that public health officials “would stop [Ebola] in its tracks in the U.S.”

More than 3,000 people have died, and CDC estimated that as many as 1.4 million people in Liberia and Sierra Leone could contract Ebola by January 20. That’s about one in seven members of the population.

The World Health Organization also warned that given the scale of the outbreak, there’s a possibility that Ebola will go from epidemic to “endemic” in West Africa — essentially, the disease won’t go away, but continue to afflict the local population. 

Ebola’s initial symptoms include fever, headache, diarrhea, and vomiting — all of which sound misleadingly common and relatively treatable. But the disease can quickly progress, with mortality rates of upward of 70%.