Four people have been hospitalized in Spain to try to stem the spread of Ebola after a Spanish nurse became the first person in the world known to have contracted the virus outside of Africa, health authorities said yesterday.
The nurse, who tested positive for the virus on Monday, her husband, who is showing no symptoms of the disease, and two other people are being closely monitored in hospital, health officials told a news conference in Madrid.
One of those hospitalized is a health worker who has diarrhea, but no fever. The other is a Spaniard who traveled from Nigeria, said Rafael Perez-Santamaria, head of Madrid’s Carlos III Hospital.
With concerns growing around the world of the Ebola pandemic spreading beyond west Africa, the Spanish officials sought to reassure the public that they were tackling the threat.
Twenty-two people who came into contact with the nurse are being monitored, Perez-Santamaria said.
They have not been isolated, but they are having their temperature taken twice a day to check for signs of infection.
The unprecedented Ebola outbreak this year has killed more than 3,400 people in west Africa and become an escalating concern to the rest of the world.
It has taken an especially devastating toll on healthcare workers, sickening or killing more than 370 in the hardest-hit countries of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone — places that already were short of doctors and nurses.
The Spanish nurse was part of the medical team that treated a 69-year-old Spanish priest — Manuel Garcia Viejo — who died in a Madrid hospital late last month, Spain’s health minister said on Monday.
The sick priest had been flown home from his post in Sierra Leone; the nurse is believed to have contracted the virus from him.
She went to a Madrid hospital with a fever on Sunday, 10 days after the priest died, and was placed in isolation.
She was transferred early yesterday to the Carlos III hospital, where the priest — and a second missionary priest sick with Ebola — were cared for until they died.
The WHO confirmed there has not been a previous transmission outside west Africa in the current outbreak.
In the US, video journalist Ashoka Mukpo, who became infected while working in Liberia, arrived at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where another Ebola patient had been treated. It is not clear how he was infected.
It may have happened when he helped clean a vehicle someone died in, his father, Mitchell Levy, said.
On Monday, his symptoms of fever and nausea still appeared mild, Levy said.
“It was really wonderful to see his face,” said Levy, who talked to his son over a video chat system.
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 hospitalized.
There are no approved drugs for Ebola, so doctors have tried experimental treatments in a few cases.
The critically ill Liberian man hospitalized in Dallas is also receiving an experimental treatment, Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said on Monday.
Thomas Eric Duncan is the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the US; he was admitted to the hospital on Sept. 28, about a week after arriving in Texas.
The hospital said 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.
Two other experimental drugs developed specifically for Ebola have been used, though it is unclear whether they had any effect.
The small supply of ZMapp was exhausted after being used on a few patients — though government officials say more should be available in the next two months.
A second drug, TKM-Ebola from Tekmira Pharmaceuticals, has been used in at least one patient and is said to be in limited supply.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry urged the US government to begin screening air passengers arriving from Ebola-affected nations, including taking their temperatures.
Perry stopped short of joining some conservatives who have backed bans on travel from those countries.
Federal health officials say a travel ban could make the desperate situation worse in those countries, and White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was not currently under consideration.
Passengers leaving the outbreak zone are checked for fevers at the airport.
Duncan was screened in Liberia, but he had no symptoms then, health officials have said.
He also apparently had no symptoms when he arrived the next day, so a screening in the US would not have detected his infection.
Health officials have said he did not get sick until four or five days later. The disease’s incubation period is 21 days.
Airline crews and border agents already watch for sick passengers, and in a high-level meeting on Monday at the White House, officials discussed potential options for screening passengers when they arrive in the US as well.
Obama said the US would be “working on protocols to do additional passenger screening both at the source and here in the United States.”
He did not outline any details or offer a timeline.
Later yesterday, a Spanish official announced that the nurse’s husband is now in quarantine in hospital.
“The husband is already in hospital and is being monitored so that he can have a quarantine situation with better monitoring,” Mercedes Vinuesa, the civil servant in charge of Spain’s health service, told a parliamentary committee.
A European Commission spokesman said the case would be discussed at a Health Security Committee meeting today.
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