As part of a safety drill, the ‘patient’ is removed from a staged Air Malta arrival. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

A ‘passenger’ showing signs of a possible Ebola infection was wheeled off a plane in a specialised incubator yesterday as part of a series of emergency drills being held across the island.

The response test started with the staged arrival of an Air Malta flight KM11 at 10am from Tunisia.

National health authorities scrambled to contain the landing area at the airport and prepared to evacuate ‘infected’ passengers and cabin crew.

The ‘suspect patient’ was reported to be experiencing fever, swelling and bleeding, symptoms consistent with the deadly Ebola virus. The person having supposedly recently visited Sierra Leone, one of the West African states that was worst affected by the epidemic, further compounded the situation.

Specially trained response officials escorted the other passengers on the flight, who came within a metre of the ‘infected’ passenger, off the tarmac to Mater Dei Hospital. They were then handed over to the port health authorities who oversaw most of the exercise.

Meanwhile, another wave of response professionals, wearing protective clothing and carrying special breathing apparatus, carried the Ebola ‘patient’ off in an incubator and sprayed the stretcher with chemicals used to contain highly infectious diseases.

After a short stop in a hazardous material tent set up beside the plane, the staff transported the patient to hospital.

Michael Spiteri, from the government’s Emergency Department, coordinated the exercise. He said the drill was aimed at evaluating protocol rather than testing staff.

“You can never tell what will go wrong on the day. For instance, through this exercise we have found that just one type of incubation stretcher will fit through a plane’s aisles. You can’t leave that to the day, it would be too late,” he said.

The exercise was some five months in the planning, and it formed part of a wide-ranging national risk assessment being carried out by the govern-ment’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Unit.

The assessment will see tests run for a number of eventualities, from oil spills to explosions and even earthquakes and meteor strikes.