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doctors diagnosed the first case of Ebola in the United States. It was a man who had arrived in Texas from Liberia. That West African nation is where most cases of the viral disease have turned up so far during the current outbreak. The man felt well when he left Africa on September 19. His first symptoms only emerged 5 days later.

The man saw a doctor a few days after that. Doctors sent him to the hospital on September 28. There he was put in isolation. Doctors, who suspected he might have Ebola, sent a sample of his blood to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, in Atlanta, Ga. CDC officials confirmed the man had Ebola on Tuesday afternoon.

Tom Frieden directs the CDC. “Ebola can be scary. But there’s all the difference in the world between the U.S. and parts of Africa where Ebola is spreading,” he says. “The United States has a strong health care system and public health professionals who will make sure this case does not threaten our communities,” he says. So even if additional cases show up during the coming weeks, he says, “I have no doubt that we will contain this.”

Ebola is not contagious until someone shows symptoms, Frieden noted. He saids this means there is no risk that people who shared the man’s flights would have picked up the virus from him. In fact, people are now being screened for fever — an early Ebola symptom — before they are allowed to board an airplane leaving an affected African country. However, even when an infected person does start to show symptoms, he or she cannot infect another through a casual association. Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids (not through the air, as flu is).

There are several strains of the virus, named for where they first showed up. This is the first case of the Ebola-Zaire form of the virus to appear outside of Africa, Frieden says. The Dallas patient is “critically ill.” A CDC team is on its way to Texas to help trace the man’s contacts.

To date, CDC reports that 6,574 cases of known or suspected Ebola have turned up in Africa this year. Of them, 3,091 have died. However, CDC also suspects that the actual number of cases may be 2.5 times as high as the reported figures. In fact, a week before the Texas announcement CDC projected that the actual total number of Ebola infections might be hit 21,000 by September 30.