( CNN ) Five Americans who were monitored for three weeks at an Omaha , Nebraska , hospital after being exposed to Ebola in West Africa have been released , a Nebraska Medicine spokesman said in an email Wednesday . One of the five had a heart-related issue on Saturday and has been discharged but has n't left the area , Taylor Wilson wrote . The others have already gone home . They were exposed to Ebola in Sierra Leone in March , but none developed the deadly virus . They are clinicians for Partners in Health , a Boston-based aid group . They all had contact with a colleague who was diagnosed with the disease and is being treated at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda , Maryland . As of Monday , that health care worker is in fair condition . The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has said the last of 17 patients who were being monitored are expected to be released by Thursday . More than 10,000 people have died in a West African epidemic of Ebola that dates to December 2013 , according to the World Health Organization . Almost all the deaths have been in Guinea , Liberia and Sierra Leone . Ebola is spread by direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person .
17 Americans were exposed to the Ebola virus while in Sierra Leone in March . The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that there is no evidence of a link between the two cases.