The first U.S. nurse who contracted the Ebola virus at a Texas hospital will be transferred Thursday to an isolation unit at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) near Washington DC, the NIH said.
"The nurse is being admitted to the Special Clinical Studies Unit of the NIH Clinical Center at the request of Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital," the NIH said in a statement.
"She will receive state-of-the-art care in this high-level containment facility, which is one of a small number of such facilities in the United States."
According to the NIH, the isolation unit is "specifically designed to provide high-level isolation capabilities and is staffed by infectious diseases and critical care specialists."
The nurse, 26-year-old Nina Pham, was diagnosed with the virus after providing patient care to the country's first and now deceased Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan.
Pham's colleague, 29-year-old Amber Joy Vinson, tested positive for Ebola Wednesday, and was transported late Wednesday to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, where two Ebola patients brought back from West Africa have been successfully treated.