Spanish authorities reported four new patients with suspected Ebola symptoms yesterday, 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.
Priest had been in Liberia while air passenger started shaking during flight
Spain has been on high alert for Ebola after a nurse who cared for the two deceased priests in Madrid, Teresa Romero, became the first person outside Africa to become infected in the current outbreak. Her case prompted recriminations over how prepared the country was to deal with the disease.
Madrid authorities evacuated an Air France plane yesterday after a passenger started developing tremors on a flight from Paris, Air France and airports operator Aena said. The person had originally travelled from Nigeria before taking a connecting flight.
The passenger was taken to Madrid’s Carlos III hospital – the same hospital where Romero is being treated and other suspected Ebola cases are being monitored – in an ambulance flanked by a police motorcade, television images showed. The driver was wearing full protective suit and goggles.
Another person, who was among a group of 68 being monitored for signs of Ebola because of links to Romero’s case, was also checked into the Carlos III hospital earlier yesterday after developing a fever. Authorities had said the 68 were at low risk, but had to check their temperature regularly from home.
Spanish media quoted a spokesman for the government’s Ebola committee as saying the person in question was one of seven who had been transported in an ambulance that had been used to carry Romero before her Ebola diagnosis was known.
“In all of these cases, tests will be carried out, and results will be known in the coming hours,” the committee said in a statement.
Romero is still seriously ill, though stable. Another 15 people, including her husband, are still under hospital observation in Madrid but have shown no symptoms.
Three 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 yesterday 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.
The Spanish government has stepped up its response to suspected cases of the deadly disease, after Romero’s infection prompted questions about whether Spain’s hospitals were prepared for a crisis on this scale.