Spanish authorities have reported four new patients with suspected Ebola symptoms, including a feverish passenger who started shaking on an Air France flight to Madrid and a Spanish priest who had recently been in Liberia.
Three of the cases were in the capital and the fourth in the Canary Islands, where a health source said two other people were admitted to hospital for precautionary monitoring.
The priest, who arrived in Spain on October 11, was being taken to hospital after developing a fever, one of the symptoms of the disease, the Spanish government’s Ebola committee said.
He was from the same religious order as two other Spanish priests who died in Madrid in recent weeks after contracting the deadly virus in West Africa, one in Liberia and one in Sierra Leone, they said.
Meanwhile, in Madrid’s Barajas international airport, officials activated emergency measures today after a passenger arriving on an Air France flight was suspected of possibly having Ebola.
Aena and Air France said in separate statements that a passenger on Air France 1300 from Lagos via Paris had started shaking during the flight. Air France said the other passengers disembarked from the plane, which will now be disinfected. The return flight has been canceled.
Spain’s government has stepped up its response to suspected Ebola cases in the wake of a health scare when a nurse in Madrid became the first person outside Africa to become infected with the deadly disease in the current outbreak.
The nurse, Teresa Romero, was diagnosed with the virus last week and is still seriously ill but stable. She had cared for two infected priests repatriated from West Africa and who later died.
Spanish authorities said on Thursday that a person who had been in contact with Romero and was being monitored remotely for signs of the disease would be hospitalized, after developing a fever, one of the symptoms of Ebola.
The person was one of 68 considered to have a low risk of catching Ebola, and who have to check their temperature regularly from home.
Another 15 people, including Romero’s husband, are still under observation for signs of Ebola in Madrid’s Carlos III hospital where she is also being treated, but have shown no symptoms.
CANARY ISLAND PATIENTS
Three other people were taken into hospital in Spain’s Canary Islands in possible Ebola-related cases, a health source from that region said.
One of them, a man who arrived in Tenerife on October 12 from Sierra Leone, developed a fever on Thursday and was admitted to be monitored for suspected Ebola symptoms. Two other people who lived with him were also taken to hospital as a preventative measure for monitoring, the source said.
Health workers have said the training and protective suits provided to hospital staff had been inadequate. Authorities on Monday pledged to ramp up training.
Nearly 4,500 people have died in the outbreak, nearly all of them in West Africa, out of a total of 8,997 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases reported in seven countries.
A decision is due to be announced on Friday when Spanish Defence Minister Pedro Morenes meets US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Washington. Madrid was set to agree to the request to use the bases at Rota near Cadiz and at Moron de la Frontera near Seville in southern Spain, the source said.
buenosairesherald.com