Fifty being monitored for Ebola in Spain
Three more people have been placed under quarantine for Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nurse became infected, while more than 50 other people are being monitored.
The nurse, who had cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola, was the first case of it being transmitted outside West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed 3,500 people and infected twice as many.
Her case highlighted the dangers that health workers face in caring for Ebola patients. Officials said she had changed a dressing for the priest and collected material from his room after he died.
Dead Ebola victims are highly infectious and in West Africa their bodies are collected by workers in hazardous materials outfits.
News of the quarantines has hit Spain’s stock market. It is one of Europe’s biggest tourist destinations and stocks in companies such as airlines and hotel chains fell on the Madrid stock exchange.
The nurse’s husband has shown no signs of having the disease but was admitted to hospital as a precaution, said Dr Francisco Arnalich, head of internal medicine at the Carlos III hospital where all were under quarantine.
In addition, a second nurse who also treated the priest who died on September 25 was put into quarantine after experiencing diarrhoea but she did not have a fever, the most common initial symptom for Ebola.
A Spanish engineer who arrived home after travelling to Nigeria was also under quarantine but his first test was negative for Ebola.
Public health director Mercedes Vinuesa told Parliament that authorities were drawing up a list of other people who may have had contact with the nurse. She has not been publicly identified but has no children.
Authorities have been in touch with 22 people – including relatives and personnel at the hospital in the Madrid suburb of Alcorcon where she went early yesterday with a fever.
They were also monitoring about 30 other members of the health care team that treated Manuel Garcia Viejo, the priest who returned from Sierra Leone and died of the disease.
The Health Ministry’s chief coordinator for health emergencies, Fernando Simon, told Cadena SER radio the nurse was in stable condition and her life not in immediate danger. Health officials said she had no symptoms besides fever.
Mr Simon said the nurse’s husband was “okay and relatively calm”. He also rejected criticism that Spanish authorities were slow to react to the case.
About 20 health care workers at the hospital have protested amid claims by nursing union officials that Spain was not giving them enough training and the most modern Ebola protection equipment.
The nurse with Ebola also assisted in treating 75-year-old Spanish priest Miguel Pajares, who got Ebola in Liberia. He flew back to Spain and was treated with the experimental Ebola medicine ZMapp but still died.
Mr Garcia Viejo, who was in charge of the San Juan del Dios hospital in Lunsar, Sierra Leone, was not given ZMapp because worldwide supplies ran out.
The virus that causes Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
More than 370 health care workers in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone have died.
In the US, video journalist Ashoka Mukpo – who became infected while working in Liberia – arrived at the Nebraska Medical Centre in Omaha.
It is not clear how he was infected, his father Dr Mitchell Levy said. He added that his symptoms of fever and nausea still appeared mild yesterday.
Mr Mukpo is the fifth American sick with Ebola brought back from West Africa for medical care. The others were aid workers – three have recovered and one remains in hospital.
There are no approved drugs for Ebola, so doctors have tried experimental treatments in some cases.
A critically ill Liberian man in hospital in Dallas is getting an experimental treatment, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said. Thomas Eric Duncan is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the US; he was admitted to hospital on September 28.
The hospital said Mr Duncan was receiving an experimental medication called brincidofovir, which was developed to treat other types of viruses. Laboratory tests suggested it may also work against Ebola.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has urged the US government to begin screening air passengers arriving from Ebola-affected nations, including taking their temperatures.
President Barack Obama said the US will be “working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States.”
