Cameraman declared Ebola-free after treatment

TV cameraman Ashoka Mukpo, evacuated from Liberia after becoming infected with Ebola last month, has been declared free of the virus.

"The knowledge that there's no more virus in my blood is a profound relief,'' Mukpo said via Twitter Tuesday afternoon. "I'm so lucky. Wish everyone who got sick could feel this.''

He will be allowed on Wednesday to leave the bio-containment unit at Nebraska Medical Center, the special infectious disease center where he has been undergoing treatment, the hospital said.

Mukpo, 33, was working as a freelancer with an NBC News crew in the West African nation when he was found to be infected and was flown to the Nebraska hospital.

A blood test confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control showed that Mukpo, one of eight Americans to have been diagnosed with Ebola, no longer has the virus in his bloodstream, the hospital said.

It said he's free to head home to Rhode Island.

"Our staff was confident it would be able to successfully care for another patient," said Phil Smith, medical director of the Biocontainment Unit at Nebraska Medicine – Nebraska Medical Center. "We've learned first-hand that caring for a patient with the Ebola virus presents challenges you don't face in the regular hospital environment. But our years of training on protocol in the unit and gaining familiarity with all the personal protective equipment was certainly an advantage for us."

Before the announcement Tuesday, Mukpo was tweeting up a storm.

"I'm in awe of my good fortune" to be recovering from Ebola, Mukpo wrote on Twitter on Monday. "I'm a very, very lucky person. #blessed"

The freelance video journalist has been treated at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha since Oct. 6. His doctors had said that Mukpo, could be released by the end of the week if tests show he is free of the Ebola virus.

"Recovering from Ebola is a truly humbling feeling," Mukpo wrote. "Too many are not as fortunate and lucky as I've been. I'm very happy to be alive."

According to the World Health Organization, more than 9,200 people have been infected with Ebola and more than 4,500 have died, mostly in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. The first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the USA, a Liberian national named Thomas Eric Duncan, died last week at a Dallas hospital.

Mukpo is one of a handful of Americans infected with Ebola in West Africa who have been flown back to the USA for treatment. Richard Sacra, a physician, also was treated at the Nebraska Medical Center.

Both received blood transfusions from physician Kent Brantly, an Ebola survivor who was treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Four hospitals in the USA -- in Montana and Maryland as well as the Atlanta and Omaha medical centers -- have specialized biocontainment units designed to handle the most dangerous infectious diseases.

Mukpo, from Providence, R.I., also received an experimental drug called brincidofovir, an antiviral made by North Carolina-based Chimerix that has not yet been tested in animals against Ebola, but it has shown promise in test tube studies.

Brantly and missionary Nancy Writebol both received an experimental drug called ZMapp. Supplies of that drug are exhausted.

An unidentified American who had Ebola was released Sunday from Emory. Two other Americans, both nurses who treated Duncan in Dallas, remain hospitalized. One of them, Nina Pham, has been upgraded to good condition, the National Institutes of Health said Tuesday.

Mukpo said on Twitter that he plans to start a blog called Ebola Diaries. For now, he's saying a lot through his tweets.

"I don't regret going to Liberia to cover the crisis. That country was a second home to me and I had to help raise the alarm," Mukpo wrote Monday. "But I feel so much empathy for the people in west Africa who are suffering with this. Their lives are important. And this disease is awful."

Mukpo wrote that he has " no idea how I got it. It was something fluky. My best guess is I touched a surface and didn't chlorinate fast enough." He added, "I was around a lot of sick people the week before I got sick. Thought I was keeping a good distance, wish I knew exactly what went wrong."

Contributing: William M. Welch in Los Angeles