Health workers in protective gear remove the body of a woman suspected to have died from the Ebola virus, near the area of Freeport in Monrovia, Liberia
Europe stepped up its efforts against the spread of the Ebola virus as screening began for passengers arriving at London’s Heathrow airport and an infected Sudanese aid worker evacuated to Germany died.
Targeted checks including temperature readings of a “low number” of passengers started yesterday at Heathrow’s Terminal 1, which handles 85 percent of travelers to Europe’s busiest hub from Ebola-affected states. The aid worker, a United Nations employee who was flown to Leipzig on Oct. 9, succumbed yesterday night at St. Georg hospital, clinic spokesman Martin Schmalz said.
While the risk of a wide outbreak in Europe remains low, concern that local transmission will occur has grown since health workers in Spain and the U.S. contracted Ebola after caring for infected patients. Aid workers who became sick in Africa have been evacuated to the U.K., Spain, France, Germany and Norway for treatment.
Britain expects a “handful” of Ebola cases in the next few months, with the total unlikely to reach double figures, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt told Parliament Monday.
“It’s still coming together, but it’s a good precaution,” said documentary maker Clive Patterson, who was screened after flying into Heathrow yesterday morning after spending more than a week in Liberia filming footage on Ebola. “You can’t rely on the facilities and procedures of another country.”
At Paris Charles de Gaulle and Brussels airports – the only European hubs with direct flights from Ebola-hit states – measures remain more relaxed than at Heathrow. The International Air Transport Association, which represents the airline industry, reiterated that carriers need not suspend flights to the region hit by the virus, while adding that they are individually entitled to do so.
The Spanish nursing assistant who contracted Ebola after caring for two Ebola-infected missionaries is helping doctors with her care, Fernando de la Calle, a physician, told journalists at Madrid’s hospital Carlos III hospital yesterday. Doctors Monday said they were cautiously hopeful that the patient, Teresa Romero, will recover. Both of the missionaries died.
The Sudanese man who died in Germany fell ill with Ebola in Liberia. He was the third Ebola patient to be treated in Germany. A Senegalese national survived after being treated in August in a Hamburg hospital, while another patient is being treated in Frankfurt. St. Georg is one of seven hospitals in Germany specially equipped to deal with the highly contagious and potentially deadly virus, the hospital said.
In the U.S., federal and local health officials want to set up dedicated hospitals in each state for Ebola patients, part of a new emphasis on safety for health-care workers after a nurse caring for an infected patient in Dallas tested positive for the virus.
With the arrival of Ebola in the U.S., a fever or upset stomach on a crowded jetliner now risks escalation into an alarm.
Five passengers with flu-like symptoms were hustled off an Emirates Airline jet Monday in Boston, three days after a Delta Air Lines plane in Las Vegas was isolated temporarily because of a similar scare. Neither case proved to be a public-health matter. Thomas Penny, Patrick Donahue
and Kari Lundgren
Bloomberg
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