All four suspected Ebola cases admitted to hospitals in Spain on Thursday have tested negative for the virus in the initial rounds of tests, authorities said on Friday.
On Thursday, a passenger on an Air France flight arriving at Madrid’s airport was taken to hospital after he reported a fever and began trembling during the flight. He had travelled from Lagos in Nigeria to Madrid via Paris. He was brought to Madrid’s Carlos III hospital, the designated centre for treating Ebola patients in the city.
Another man, who had later travelled in the ambulance that carried Ebola patient Teresa Romero Ramos last week, was also admitted to the hospital after reporting a fever. Health authorities had been monitoring him after it emerged that seven patients were transported in the Romero Ramos ambulance before it was disinfected.
On Friday morning, authorities said both the Air France traveller and the patient who had been in the ambulance had tested negative for Ebola in the first round of tests. Both remain in quarantine while authorities wait for the results of the second round of tests.
A missionary, recently returned from Liberia, who was also admitted to the hospital on Thursday tested negative on Friday.
Fifteen other patients are in isolation in the Carlos III hospital. None of them have shown any symptoms of Ebola to date.
Three people have also been placed in quarantine in the Canary Islands. A Red Cross worker recently returned from treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone was sent to a hospital in Tenerife with a fever on Thursday and tested negative on Friday.
Spain’s only patient with a confirmed case of Ebola, Teresa Romero Ramos, remains in stable but serious condition. The presence of Ebola in her blood continues to fall, health officials noted, but cautioned that it was too early to say she is out of danger.
