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 The nurse, Teresa Romero, was being treated for the deadly infection
at a Madrid hospital while Spanish officials launched an
investigation into how she was able to contract Ebola despite strict
protocols for handling contagious patients.
The virus, which the World Health Organization said had killed 3,879
people by Oct. 5 in West Africa since March in the largest outbreak
of the disease on record, causes hemorrhagic fever and is spread
through direct contact with body fluids from an infected person.
A Liberian man who was the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the
United States died in a hospital isolation ward on Wednesday and the
U.S. government ordered extra screenings at five major airports.
The WHO said it saw no evidence of the disease being brought under
control in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, with neighboring
countries being told to prepare for the disease to spread across
their borders.
Britain said it was sending extra troops, aircraft and a naval
vessel to Sierra Leone to help stem the spread. The deployment will
see 750 military personnel help set up treatment centers and a
training facility. Three helicopters and a 100-bed naval hospital
will also be sent to the region.
INTERNET DISCOVERY
While Romero is the only confirmed Ebola case in Spain aside from
two priests who contracted the disease in Africa and died, more than
50 other people who may have had contact with the virus in the
country are being monitored, including primary health care and
hospital staff, European officials said.
"She has talked to me about the gloves, she touched her face with
the gloves. That's what she remembers and what she has told me three
times," German Ramirez, one of the doctors at Carlos III hospital
where the nurse is being treated, told reporters.
The nurse took leave from work immediately after Spanish missionary
Manuel Garcia died on Sept. 25. Wearing a full protective suit, she
had entered the priest's room once while he was alive and once after
his death to clean the room.
"I believe the error was made when taking off the suit," she told
Spain's El Pais newspaper in a telephone interview published on
Wednesday. "I see that as the most critical moment, when something
could have happened. But I'm not sure."
Health worker union officials said Romero alerted hospital staff
three times to say she had a fever and a rash, but because her
temperature had not gone above 38.6 degrees Celsius the hospital did
not see her as a risk.
Romero found out she had the disease by looking at the news on the
Internet on her phone while she was waiting for the result of her
test, she told Cuatro television station in a telephone interview.
"I asked the doctor for the result and he didn't answer in a very
clear way and that's when I started to suspect," adding she then
looked at her phone to find there was a positive case of Ebola in
Spain.
Health authorities on Thursday put down the dog, a labrador-type
breed called Excalibur, who lived with the nurse and her husband in
a suburban Madrid flat, saying it posed a biological risk and there
was evidence dogs could carry the virus.
The dog was taken out of the apartment block in a police-protected
van with the windows blacked out and a driver in a protective suit
while around 30 animal rights activists shouted "Murderers!".
The childless couple are two of six people under observation in the
sealed-off sixth floor of the hospital in Madrid. The rest of the
people, including other nurses who cared for the infected priests,
have initially tested negative for Ebola, health authorities said.
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Other people being monitored include two hairdressers who waxed the
nurse as part of a beauty treatment, media reports said.
CALLS FOR CALM
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy defended his country's health
authorities and urged people not to panic.
"We have to keep calm. It is extremely unlikely that this will turn
into an outbreak affecting many people," he said.
Rajoy said he had created a committee to oversee co-ordination
between the regional Madrid government, the central government and
European institutions. He said Spain was in constant contact with
the European Union and the World Health Organization.
"Let the professionals do their work," he said. "The Spanish health
system is one of the best in the world."
He said the investigation into how the infection had occurred was a
priority and was still under way.
Two experts from the Stockholm-based European Centre for Disease
Prevention and Control (ECDC), which monitors disease in the region,
have gone to Spain to help with the investigation, a spokesman for
the European Commission said.
The spokesman said Spanish authorities had told the EU it was not
clear at this stage how the infection had occurred, but it may have
been due to "possible relaxation" of protocols for handling the
corpse or for the disposal of medical waste.
The Commission's health security committee gathered representatives
from all EU states, the ECDC and from the World Health
Organization's European regional headquarters to discuss the
situation on Wednesday.
The WHO's Europe director Zsuzsanna Jakab told Reuters in an
interview on Tuesday it was "unavoidable" that Europe would see more
cases of Ebola within its borders because of busy travel links with
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
She stressed, however, that the continent was well prepared for
handling Ebola virus disease, and said she did not expect to see any
widespread outbreaks in European countries.
A new World Bank assessment of the potential impact of the epidemic
estimated that if it spread wider from the three states into
neighboring larger economies, the two-year regional financial impact
could reach $32.6 billion by the end of 2015.
(Additional reporting by Raquel Castillo and Inmaculada Sanz in
Madrid; Writing by Sonya Dowsett; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and
Alison Williams)
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