
REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Healthcare workers display protective gear, which hospital staff would wear to protect them from Ebola infection, inside an isolation room as part of a media tour in the emergency department of Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
In response, officials have stepped up screening procedures at certain international airports, beginning with New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
New York City has investigated more than 80 suspected or potential Ebola cases, according to The New York Times. About one person a day has been put into isolation in a city hospital over the past six weeks.
That's a lot of scares, but no one has turned up with the actual virus.
But since many fear an outbreak in a large, global, dense city, health officials are on high alert.
How They're Preparing For A Potential Case
At JFK, the entry point for about half of the 150 people who arrive in the US each day from Guinea, Sierra Leone, or Liberia, travelers coming from or who passed through those countries will be questioned, checked for illness, and have their temperatures measured using an infrared temperature gun.
People who may have been exposed to Ebola will be referred to the CDC. If sent to a hospital, they'll probably go to Bellevue, which has been designated as the go-to place for dealing with the illness in NYC.
Failures to stop infections in Spain and Dallas show that containing the virus requires what CDC Director Tom Frieden called "meticulous attention to detail." The smallest error can have potentially fatal consequences.
One criticism of those cases is that hospital staff didn't receive adequate training on how to put on and take off gear that could be easily contaminated while dealing with the virus.

REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Hospital workers are training with various types of protective equipment.
Additionally, the city's Department of Health has sent "patients" pretending to have Ebola symptoms and with a plausible travel history into all 11 city hospitals to evaluate their performance.
They've noticed that staff have a harder time removing protective suits correctly than putting them on in the first place, and they're trying to eliminate inconsistent behavior.

REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Healthcare workers display protective gear, which hospital staff would wear to protect them from Ebola infection, inside an isolation room as part of a media tour in the emergency department of Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
The Virus Can Be Stopped
Based on the experience of Nigeria, it's clear that with the proper approach, Ebola's spread in an urban area can be stopped. Ebola cases were succesfully treated in Atlanta and Nebraska without any additional infections, which is another sign that hospitals can safely treat the disease.
But it is possible that we'll see other cases show up until the epidemic in West Africa is under control.
Until then, the CDC is telling hospitals to take a travel history of patients and if there's any chance they've been exposed, to "think Ebola."