Two Americans Cleared of Having Ebola

As health officials continue ramping up to prevent a possible Ebola outbreak in the U.S., two suspected patients have been given a clean bill of health.Officials in New Mexico announced on Thursday that a woman there has been cleared after exhibiting possible symptoms of the disease.A few hours later, the Department of Public Health in California cleared the second patient."There are no confirmed cases of Ebola in California. There are no suspects patients with high risk exposure in California and the risk of the spread of Ebola in California is low," said Dr. Ronald Chapman, director of the California Department of Public Health.But the disease continues to spread in West Africa.In Nigeria, health officials are alarmed by two new infections outside the group they had been monitoring, meaning their containment efforts are not working.Governments throughout the region are now imposing travel restrictions in an effort to stop the outbreak."Communication of procedures both in the air and on the ground with regard to communicable diseases, and in particular to Ebola in this case, should be enhanced," said Barry Kashambo, executive director of the Civil Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Agency of East Africa.Meanwhile in Washington, the National Institutes of Health says it's almost ready to start human trials on an Ebola vaccine.They say it's been in the works for years, but it took this latest outbreak to move the project forward."We've been doing research for years to understand Ebola, to develop therapies, to develop vaccines; but you can't do that alone, you've got to do it in partnership with a pharmaceutical company that will actually produce a product," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.Human trials on the Ebola vaccine are scheduled to start in about two weeks.