--- title: How Ready is New York City for Ebola? description: The city says it's much more prepared for Ebola than Dallas canonical: https://time.com/3535680/how-ready-is-new-york-city-for-ebola/ author: Alexandra Sifferlin article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-24T03:45:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:01:53.759Z article:section: Health og:title: How Ready is New York City for Ebola? og:description: The city says it's much more prepared for Ebola than Dallas og:url: https://time.com/3535680/how-ready-is-new-york-city-for-ebola/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4e8fb4606181c1b0/69876293a988caa2326aa04c/ebola-nyc-craig-spencer2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3300 og:image:height: 1856 og:image:alt: Police officers stand outside 546 W. 147th street, the apartment building of Dr. Craig Spencer on Oct. 23, 2014 in New York City. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Ready is New York City for Ebola? twitter:description: The city says it's much more prepared for Ebola than Dallas twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4e8fb4606181c1b0/69876293a988caa2326aa04c/ebola-nyc-craig-spencer2.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Ready Is New York City for Ebola? > Sponsored content. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=169a5b79-9086-4f7b-ba4f-2546412d1305&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Does Insurance Cover Ebola? [Watch (HLS stream): Does Insurance Cover Ebola?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/5Fw6St3x.m3u8) (2:17)  _Published 2014-10-24. Your chances of getting Ebola in the U.S. are very slim. But if you do, who's footing the bill?_ by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Oct 24, 2014 3:45 AM UTC by [Alexandra Sifferlin](https://time.com/author/alexandra-sifferlin/) ## Alexandra Sifferlin Oct 24, 2014 3:45 AM UTC Doctors Without Borders physician Dr. Craig Spencer tested positive for Ebola on Thursday, Oct. 23, at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, immediately testing the strength of the city’s preparation for the deadly disease. Given the mistakes made during the first case of diagnosed Ebola in the United States—Thomas Eric Duncan in Dallas—New York City has more fears to quell and also more to prove. Can it do better than Dallas? Its leaders certainly think so. New York City has been prepping and drilling its hospitals for the possibility of an Ebola patient since July 28, when it was confirmed that Americans Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol had contracted Ebola in Liberia. “I wanted to know that our staff was able to handle \[a possible Ebola patient\],” says Dr. Marc Napp, senior vice president of medical affairs at Mount Sinai Health System. “We’ve prepared for a variety of different things in the past: anthrax, H1N1, small pox, 9/11, Hurricane Sandy,” Kenneth Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) told TIME. “This preparation is not unusual.” New York City is also one of the first cities to adopt a new system that designates one hospital within a region—Bellevue in this instance—to be the headquarters for Ebola care. If there’s a patient who is a risk, like Spencer, Bellevue will take the patient. Should a potential Ebola case walk into the emergency room of another hospital, those patients can be transferred to Bellevue. This is not the first time New York officials have responded to a possible Ebola case. In early August, Mount Sinai [announced it had a patient](http://time.com/3080189/ebola-mt-sinai-new-york/) with a travel history and symptoms that were a red flag for Ebola. The emergency room isolated the patient and the hospital sent blood for tests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—tests that ultimately came back negative. The city wasn’t as lucky with Spencer, who had been self-monitoring since returning from Liberia. Spencer notified Doctors Without Borders when he ran a temperature on Thursday morning. Staff from New York’s Bellevue hospital were soon at his doorstep in hazmat suits, ready to take him in for treatment to the hospital. “We were hoping \[this\] wouldn’t happen but we were realistic,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a press conference at Bellevue Thursday night. “We can’t say this was an unexpected circumstance.” Cuomo noted that New York City had the advantage of learning from Dallas’ experience and its mistakes. Texas Presbyterian Hospital failed to diagnose Duncan with Ebola right away, despite his Ebola-like symptoms and the fact he’d been in Liberia. “The trigger went off again when the nurses got sick in Dallas,” says Mount Sinai’s Napp. New York officials worked closely with the CDC and local health departments as well as with JFK Airport to ensure procedures were in place for identifying people who may be at risk for Ebola at every point of entry to the country. On Oct. 21, the city [hosted an Ebola education session](http://time.com/3528490/ebola-health-care-workers/) that was run by area health experts, with members of the CDC who demonstrated the proper donning and doffing personal protective equipment (PPE). Over 5,000 health care workers and hospital staff members took part. “As a result of the missteps in Dallas, there were a whole new series of protocols,” says Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency medicine physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. There are some challenges—New York has spent time and energy preparing based on now outdated CDC guidelines. The new CDC guidelines for PPEs were only announced[ on Oct. 20](http://time.com/3525869/cdc-changes-ebola-guidelines/), which doesn’t give the city much time to “practice, practice, practice” them as CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden has suggested. And New York City has the challenge of sheer size and density. New Yorkers live in very close quarters with one another. Thankfully, Ebola isn’t an airborne disease, so even though Spencer traveled Brooklyn to go bowling, since he wasn’t symptomatic, anyone he might have encountered is at very low risk of contracting the disease. For now, New York City has just one patient, and it plans to get it right. Doing so might restore American confidence in the system—but failure would be devastating. _Read next:_ [_Can You Get Ebola From Subway Poles and Bowling Balls?_](http://time.com/3535728/ebola-subway-bowling-balls-explainer/?xid=time%5Freadnext) ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] The chances of contracting Ebola in the United States, are extremely slim. And if you do, you're likely to receive excellent care. But how much would it cost, and who's paying for it? The answer is not that simple. The cost of treating Ebola in a US hospital, varies greatly. Estimates range from $ 5, 000 to to $ 25, 000, per day. That includes paying for medical staff, intensive care treatment, isolation units, protective gear, waste disposal, and so on. [ MUSIC ] Some patients end up staying at the hospital for weeks, racking up a bill of $ 500, 000 or more. How much of that falls on you depends on how covered you are. Many private insurance companies, cover treatment for Ebola. That's because prolonged treatment of the disease falls under inpatient care. Just as if you were treated in the hospital for something like appendicitis. For example, in recent cases of Ebola that were treated at Nebraska medical center in Omaha, every patient had insurance. Insurance that covered the cost of their care. If you're covered under health insurance exchanges or Medicaid, you'll also likely be covered. But keep in mind that patients could pay thousands of dollars in deductibles, depending on their plan. Also, there's only a limited number of hospitals that have been on the frontline of Ebola treatment, including Emory in Atlanta and Presbyterian in Dallas. And it's possible that your insurance company won't cover the out of network fees. But for something as high- profile as Ebola, experts say that it's highly unlikely that an insurer will put all of that cost on you. If you're not insured, you will still receive treatment, and you may not even need to pay for it. For instance, Nebraska Medical Center said that patients without insurance would be covered by a charitable fund. One thing you won't have to worry about is paying for experimental drug treatment. Such as Zmap. As companies generally don't charge for drugs that are still in the research and development phase. But there are other costs surrounding Ebola to consider. First of all after patients are diagnosed, hey may have to be transferred to specialized centers which may or may not be covered by your insurance. Cleaning up and Ebola contaminated apartment is another big expense. Clean up costs range from between 20, 000 to 500, 000 depending on the size of the apartment or home. While these numbers may seen daunting. The scarier figure is the money needed to eradicate a bullet in West Africa, nearly 1 billion dollars. 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