The Ebola-stricken New York doctor’s condition worsened Saturday as health officials confirmed he was being treated with an experimental drug.
Dr. Craig Spencer is now being treated at Bellevue Hospital with the antiviral drug, Brincidofovir.
Dr. Craig Spencer, 33, “entered the next phase of his illness” and was suffering from gastrointestinal symptoms, officials revealed Saturday night — as NBC News reported that Spencer had also been given a plasma transfusion from Nancy Writebol, an aid worker who contracted the disease in Africa and has since been cured.
But the brave doctor, two days after testing positive for Ebola, was still “awake and communicating,” health officials said.
And he clearly hadn’t lost his sense of humor.
In an interview with The New York Times, Spencer said he had received “about 200 calls from reporters and 300 emails” but couldn’t take them all because he was a bit preoccupied.
“When you have Ebola, not the best way to spend your time,” he quipped, adding, “I am feeling well.”Spencer, who contracted the lethal virus while volunteering on a mission of mercy in Guinea, is now receiving Brincidofovir, officials said.The Daily News was first to report that city health officials made a frantic appeal for the anti-viral drug within five hours of Spencer’s arrival Thursday at Bellevue Hospital. The drug was later hustled to the hospital after the city sent out an email with the subject line “URGENT REQUEST” asking hospitals, researchers and pharmacies to reach out if they had the medication.
A spokesman for Chimerix, which makes Brincidofovir, would not say whether the drug was flown up from its North Carolina headquarters once the FDA gave its approval to Bellevue to use it for Spencer, or whether another city hospital was permitted to give part of its experimental supply to speed up the delivery.
The drug is generally given in a regimen of five doses over 21/2 weeks. Officials confirmed Spencer already received his first treatment and was also taking intravenous plasma.
Spencer contracted the virus while working for Doctors Without Borders.
Brincidofovir was used to successfully treat NBC News cameraman Ashoka Mukpo for Ebola at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.Doctors in Dallas tried the treatment without luck on Thomas Duncan, the Liberian man who died Oct. 8 after flying into Texas for a family reunion.Spencer, who lives in Hamilton Heights, identified himself as a potential Ebola patient after feeling fatigued and finding his temperature at 100.3 degrees.
Brincidofovir is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treatment of Ebola, but it can be used in special cases if the treating doctor or facility receives dispensation on “compassionate” or “expanded” grounds.
At this point, there are no FDA-sanctioned Ebola treatments. ZMapp, another experimental drug considered quite promising, was made in a small batch and ranout after seven patients were treated.
Also Saturday, Spencer’s fiancée, Morgan Dixon, returned to the couple’s W.147th St. apartment just before 7 p.m.
Her face covered in a pale scarf, she walked into her building without saying a word to the phalanx of reporters assembled outside. The 30-year-old grant writer had been quarantined at Bellevue since Thursday.
“What we have done today is bring somebody back to where they should be — their home,” said Dr. Jay Varma, the deputy city health commissioner for disease control.Dixon will remain inside the apartment under quarantine for 21 days, the incubation period of the virus. Varma added that Dixon will not even hand-receive deliveries — they’ll be dropped off at her door. A Health Department officer will remain posted outside her door 24 hours a day.
Varma stressed that Dixon has shown no symptoms and poses no risk of spreading the disease.
“It’s important to remember that this is a person who’s completely healthy,” Varma said.Two other Spencer friends who had close contact with the doctor will also remain under quarantine through Nov. 14.
A pair of short videos, first obtained by NY1, captured the inside of Spencer’s apartment. The first brief clip showed a worker in a full, white hazardous-materials suit inside the home.The second, running a little over a minute, captured stray pieces of a life interrupted Thursday when Spencer realized his symptoms made an Ebola diagnosis likely.
The video shot inside the darkened apartment showed full garbage bags sitting on the floors, clothes strewn on the hardwood floors and an unmade bed.
There was no sign of a toothbrush on the sink, where cleaners took away anything that contained potentially dangerous fluids carrying the virus.
There was still cash left behind atop a bedroom dresser, while the living room held a banjo, a single CD on the arm of a sofa, and a clearly unwatered plant.
A team of hired cleaners from Bio-Recovery Corp. descended on the apartment Friday to scrub the place down. In addition to the bathroom items, the six-man team tossed away bed linens, towels and all the food in the fridge.
There was one attempt Saturday to brighten the mood on the blocks where some of the residents had already relocated and nerves remained jittery.
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