Atlanta, GA (CNN)- A specially equipped medical plane whisked Ebola-stricken Dr. Kent Brantly from Liberia to Georgia on Saturday, setting up the latest leg of a race to save the man who’s now the first known Ebola patient on U.S. soil.
An ambulance rushed Brantly — one of two Americans seriously sickened by the deadly viral hemorrhagic fever last month while on the front lines of a major outbreak in West Africa — from Dobbins Air Reserve Base to Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital shortly after the plane landed late Saturday morning.
Video from Emory showed someone wearing a white, full-body protective suit helping a similarly clad person emerge from the ambulance and walk into the hospital.
Emory has said it will treat Brantly, 33, and, eventually, the other American, fellow missionary Nancy Writebol, in an isolation unit.
There, physicians say they have a better chance to steer them to health while ensuring the virus doesn’t spread — the last point nodding to public fears, notably expressed on social media, that the disease could get a U.S. foothold.
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The plane, also equipped with a unit meant to isolate the patient, was able to take only one patient at a time. Organizers expect the plane will now pick up Writebol in Liberia, and bring her to Georgia early next week, said Todd Shearer, spokesman for Christian charity Samaritan’s Purse, with which both Americans were affiliated.
