Health officials monitor kids who had contact with Ebola patient in Texas

photo A man walks up the stairway leading to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014. A patient in the hospital is showing signs of the Ebola virus and is being kept in strict isolation with test results pending, hospital officials said Monday. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

DALLAS - Texas Gov. Rick Perry says a handful of school-aged children who had contact with a man diagnosed with Ebola are being monitored.

Perry says health officials learned Wednesday that the children have been identified as having contact with the man and are being monitored at home. The unidentified man has been in isolation at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas since Sunday.

The man is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. Health authorities have not revealed his nationality or age. He was listed in serious condition Wednesday.

Authorities say the ambulance crew who transported the man and members of his family are among the 12 to 18 people being monitored after exposure to the man.

Sister: U.S. Ebola patient told hospital he was from Liberia

The sister of the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States says he told officials the first time he went to the hospital that he was visiting from Liberia.

Mai Wureh told The Associated Press that her brother, Thomas Eric Duncan, went to a Dallas emergency room on Friday and was sent him away with antibiotics. He returned two days later to Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital and was admitted.

Dr. Mark Lester confirmed Wednesday that a nurse asked Duncan on his first visit whether he had been in an area affected by the Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands in West Africa but that the "information was not fully communicated throughout the whole team."

The disease is not contagious until symptoms begin, and it takes close contact with bodily fluids to spread.

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