MADRID, October 8. /TASS/. Another patient probably infected with the Ebola virus was admitted to the Carlos III hospital in Madrid, Spanish healthcare bodies said Wednesday.
The talk is about a nurse who took part in transportation to Spain from Africa of Spanish priests Miguel Pajares and Manuel Garcia Viejo who later died.
According to Spanish doctors, “the nurse has a slight rise in temperature, which is not an attribute of a disease caused by the Ebola virus, but specialists said it is expedient to isolate her”.
So, besides the new patient, nurse Maria Teresa Romero, her husband, as well as a Spanish engineer who recently returned from Nigeria and another nurse are in the hospital now. Tests taken from the latter two Tuesday did not show the presence of the Ebola virus.
Pajares working in Liberia was the first Spaniard infected with the virus. He died on August 12. Viejo was the second Spanish national to contract Ebola as he worked as chief medical officer of a hospital in the town of Lunsar in Sierra Leone.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the death toll from the Ebola virus outbreak has exceeded 3,500 people out of a total of 7,500 officially registered cases.
The Ebola virus disease (EVD), previously known as the Ebola hemorrhagic fever, is a severe illness in humans, often fatal, according to the WHO website. The virus is passed on to people from wild animals and can be transmitted from humans to humans. The average EVD case death rate is some 50%
The first outbreaks of the EVD occurred in remote Central African villages, near tropical rainforests. However, major urban and rural areas have been involved in the most recent outbreak in western Africa.
Early supportive care, which includes rehydration and symptomatic treatment, improves the survival rate. No licensed treatment has yet been proven to be able to neutralize the virus but a number of blood, immunological and drug medications are under development. There are no licensed Ebola vaccines yet but two candidates are being evaluated.