Two patients cured, but virus scare isn’t over yet Ebola patient Ashoka Mukpo, right, leaves Nebraska hospital with aid of his father, Dr. Mitchell LevyThe fight against the deadly Ebola virus has taken a couple of tentative steps forward -- at least domestically -- in the last 24 hours, as two Americans afflicted with the disease were deemed cured and the condition of a third is improving. But Ebola continues to spread rapidly throughout the three West African nations where it seems to have taken root. Further, the apparent eradication in the U.S. may be short-lived, as nine people in Connecticut reportedly were ordered to stay home by the state’s health department after traveling to the afflicted regions across the Atlantic. Still, President Barack Obama said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the U.S. is turning a corner in the fight against Ebola. This came after Texas nurse Amber Vinson was moved out of the isolation unit at an Atlanta hospital and NBC News cameraman Ashoka Mukpo left the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, Neb., deemed cured of the disease he contracted while on assignment in Liberia. Vinson, who helped treat Thomas Eric Duncan, the patient who died in Dallas after contracting the disease, was stricken along with nurse Nina Pham, whose condition has been upgraded to good from fair. Pham is being treated at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md. It also was reported that Pham’s dog, Bentley, has tested negative for the virus. The two nurses were working at Texas Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, where Duncan was being treated. “It gives you some sense that when it’s caught early and where the public health infrastructure operates effectively, this outbreak can be stopped,” Obama said, according to news accounts. Officials say, though, it doesn’t mean the Ebola scare is over, either overseas or in the U.S. The Ebola death toll in the afflicted nations -- Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea -- is rapidly approaching 5,000, while the number of those stricken with the disease is nearing 10,000. In Connecticut, three Yale University students and a family of six are being ordered to stay home for 21 days as a precaution after they visited West Africa. The group received the notice from Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy. Further, officials say that the Ebola scare should be a cautionary tale for future outbreaks of other viruses, and U.S. preparedness needs to be stepped up. The Boston Globe said on Thursday that the cleanup in the Nebraska hospital’s biocontainment unit following Mukpo’s discharge will be elaborate, although the hospital could accept another Ebola patient if needed. Health experts say, however, that even though the Nebraska hospital is a 10-bed unit, the facility and others like it are staffed with enough personnel to treat only a couple of infected patients. Russ Britt