A 40-year-old nurse who works at La Paz-Carlos III hospital in Madrid (Spain) has been infected with the Ebola virus, Spanish Public Health Director Mercedes Vinuesa confirmed on Monday during a conference. release in Madrid.
This caregiver had been part of the team that tried to treat patients who had returned from Liberia in August and September. She began to feel ill at the end of September, but it was not until she returned from vacation that she consulted the doctor. After two positive tests for the Ebola virus, she was admitted to a specialized unit in a Madrid hospital while the people who were in contact with her are now being followed by the health authorities.
The virus could arrive in France in less than 3 weeks
On Monday, scientists from the University of Lancaster (Great Britain) assessed the risk of the Ebola virus arriving in Spain at 14% by the end of October. Based on known data on the spread of the virus and the assumption of unchanged air traffic to West African countries, these researchers estimate that the risk of seeing the virus arrive in France in less than 3 weeks is 75%. This risk would be 50% for Great Britain.
These alarming figures which quickly circulated on the internet began to give rise to psychosis. Monday morning, three families refused to drop off their children at a school in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), due to the presence of a student who had recently returned from Guinea, a country affected by the Ebola virus. This student shows no particular signs of the Ebola virus but precautionary measures are applied and a nurse comes to take the child’s temperature every day.
Minister of Social Affairs and Health Marisol Touraine assured that she was not “particularly worried. Ebola is a dangerous virus, of course, but it is not transmitted in any condition”. As for the alarmist forecasts: “These are mathematical projections. And because zero risk does not exist, we have been preparing for months to face a case of Ebola on the territory” she says.
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