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President Obama called on Congress on Tuesday to approve an emergency spending package to fight the Ebola outbreak in West Africa and to help more U.S. hospitals and laboratories prepare for future cases that may come their way.

Speaking during a visit to the National Institutes of Health, Obama said the money is needed to stamp out the disease completely, even as the crisis has faded from the headlines.

Every hot spot is an ember that, if not contained, can become a new fire, Obama said. We cannot let down our guard, even for a minute. And we cant just fight this epidemic. We have to extinguish it.

Obama is pushing for $6.18 billion in funding to continue ramping up readiness in American hospitals. Already, the federal government has increased capacity in U.S. hospitals from eight beds at three facilities to 53 beds at 35 designated treatment centers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Tuesday.

There are no reported cases of Ebola in the U.S. But Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said late Tuesday that it had admitted a patient for evaluation.

The White House is running a federal preparedness effort that includes equipping more labs to test for Ebola and completing early clinical trials for the first vaccine to treat the disease.

In a report to Obama on Tuesday, Ebola response coordinator Ron Klain said the country is far more prepared to cope with the deadly virus domestically and to squelch it at the source than it was two months ago, according to an administration official familiar with the closed-door meeting.

This is an expensive enterprise, Obama said Tuesday from the lab outside Washington. That money is running out. We cannot beat Ebola without more funding. If we want other countries to keep stepping up, we will have to continue to lead the way.

Obamas quest for funding will not be easy. The package includes about $1.5 billion in contingency funds, which lawmakers could target in an effort to pare back proposed spending.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the White House remains concerned the money may not make it into the year-end spending bill being crafted in Congress.

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Obama calls on lawmakers to fund ongoing response to Ebola virus