An American who may have been exposed to Ebola in Congo is being monitored back in the US

• An American who may have been exposed to Ebola while working in the Democratic Republic of Congo has returned to the United States for monitoring.
• The person will be monitored for up to two weeks at the Nebraska Medical Center, which has handled Ebola patients before.
• An infectious diseases specialist at the medical center said the person is not currently ill and is not contagious.
• Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak for months, with hundreds of deaths as of December.

An American medical worker who may have been exposed to Ebola while working in the Democratic Republic of Congo was flown back to the United States on Saturday and brought immediately to the Nebraska Medical Center for monitoring.

The person, whose identity wasn't revealed because they requested privacy, will be monitored for up to two weeks in a "secure area" the public can't access, the Nebraska Medical Center said in a press release.

The person was privately transported to the medical center Saturday afternoon, Politico reported.

"This person may have been exposed to the virus but is not ill and is not contagious," Ted Cieslak, an infectious diseases specialist with Nebraska Medicine and an associate professor of epidemiology in the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Public Health, said in a statement. "Should any symptoms develop, the Nebraska Medicine/UNMC team is among the most qualified in the world to deal with them."

Read more: The latest reports from Congo show patients not usually known to contract Ebola are infected: newborn babies

The medical center said it would provide updates on the person's condition only if it becomes necessary to transfer the person to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.

The medical center treated several Ebola patients in 2014, and monitored several other exposed people in 2015, though none contracted the disease.

Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak since August, culminating in 543 cases confirmed and 357 deaths as of late December, according to the World Health Organization.

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