A DOCTOR in New York has been confirmed as the city’s first case of Ebola.

The man is 33-year-old Dr Craig Spencer, who was treating Ebola patients in Guinea working with the group Médecins Sans Frontières.

The health worker had retued from Ebola-stricken Africa on October 14, and is believed to have travelled on the New York subway, visited a Manhattan bowling alley and caught a taxi in the 24 hours before he was diagnosed.

The bowling alley Dr Spencer visited, The Gutter in Brooklyn, has closed its door

Spencer’s apartment on W 147th St. has been sealed off by FDNY hazardous materials specialists.

His live-in girlfriend, Morgan Dixon, has also been quarantined, the New York Daily News reports.

A neighbour who shares the building told the New York Daily News she wasn’t conceed about contracting the virus.

“I’ve had no fluid exchanges with my neighbours,” she said.

Health care workers are currently tracing anyone he may have come into contact with, although New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said few people would be at risk.

“We can safely say that it is a very brief period of time that patient has had symptoms,” the mayor told media.

“Our understanding is that very few people were in direct contact with him.”

Dr Spencer was rushed by ambulance from his home in Harlem to Bellevue Hospital suffering from a 103-degree Fahrenheit (39.4 degree Celsius) fever and nausea, The New York Post reported.

City officials confirmed his diagnosis after testing at the hospital, and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention with confirm the initial test.

He’s the fourth confirmed case int eh U.S. and the first in the nation’s biggest city.

Dr Craig Spencer is still being treated in Bellevue Hospital. Source: AFP

A statement from the hospital confirmed the patient was transferred to the facility by emergency crews in protective gear, as he “presented a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms”.

“The patient is a health care worker who retued to the U.S. within the past 21 days from one of the three countries currently facing the outbreak of this virus,” the statement read.

While awaiting Dr Spencer’s test results, the Health Department advised it has begun to “actively trace” the patients contact to identify anyone who may be at risk.

Following the botched containment of the disease in Dallas that saw two nurses infected after treating the country’s first Ebola patient, the New York health department is at pains to assure the public they are taking “all necessarily precautions to ensure the health and safety of all New Yorkers”.

Dr Spencer is in isolation at Bellevue Hospital. Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP Source: AFP

“The chances of the average New Yorker contracting Ebola are extremely slim. Ebola is spread by directly touching the bodily fluids of an infected person,” the hospital said in a statement.

More than 130 patients have been referred to the city’s Health Department with Ebola-like symptoms, and no cases have been confirmed.

A sign advising those who are showing possible Ebola symptoms is posted in a lobby of the hospital. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File) Source: AP

The scare comes as a man in New Orleans is also being monitored for signs of the virus, although the state health department has advised he is at “low risk” of testing positive for the virus, Fox reports.

The number of people affected by the worst ever outbreak of Ebola has soared to almost 10,000 and the death toll edges closer to 4,900.

The World Health Organization held its latest round of crisis meetings on the deadly epidemic, saying the situation in the worst-hit countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone “remains of great conce” as cases increase exponentially.

A two-year-old girl tested positive for the virus in Mali oveight, making it the sixth African country the disease has spread to.

Police escort of possible Ebola patient in NYC