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Experimental Ebola drug used at Emory Hospital no longer available

ATLANTA, Ga. — The Ebola patient hospitalized in Dallas, Texas is now in critical condition.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated reporters on the man's condition in a briefing from its DeKalb County headquarters Sunday.

They say they are being bombarded by phone calls from other hospitals.

Channel 2’s Rachel Stockman learned that the experimental drug used to help Ebola patients taken to Emory University Hospital is no longer available.

CDC officials say health care workers are doing everything possible to help this man and contain the virus from spreading.

Officials confirmed Sunday that Ebola patient Thomas Duncan took a turn for the worse in the Dallas Hospital, after being diagnosed with the deadly disease.

Since the confirmed case on Tuesday, the CDC says the number of calls they are now dealing with has increased substantially.

“We are getting about 50 calls or emails per day before the initial patient was diagnosed, now it is up to about 800 per day, call a day,” CDC director Tom Frieden said.

On Friday, hazmat crews went to sanitize the apartment where Duncan and his family had been staying. Family members were moved to another location for monitoring, according health officials.

Forty-eight others who have been in contact with Duncan are also being monitored, officials said.

“Ebola only spreads with direct contact with someone who is sick,” Frieden said.

Channel 2 Action News learned Duncan will not being given the experimental drug Z-Map, which others, including the two patients in Atlanta, were given.

“There were a very small number of those doses in the world and they are all gone,” health officials said.

With the increased calls to more heavily monitor international travel from the affected areas, the CDC’s director said:

“If we make it harder to fight the outbreak in West Africa, we actually increase our own risk.”

There is another experimental drug out there but Frieden said it can actually make patients worse at first, so it will be up to the patient’s family and doctors to use it.