Updated: 7.40 pm
SPAIN’S HEALTH MINISTER has this evening confirmed that a Spanish nurse has tested positive for Ebola in the first case of the disease being transmitted outside Africa.
Ana Mato announced to a press conference after 8pm local time, that the female nurse had been part of the medical team which treated a 69-year-old priest for the disease at the La Paz-Carlos III hospital in Madrid.
Earlier, Spanish newspaper El Pais said the nurse had been treating the Spanish missionary priest Brother Manuel Garcia Viejo, who contracted Ebola in Sierra Leone, before dying in hospital in the Spanish capital on 25 September.
According to the Reuters news agency, Spanish health authority sources said the nurse had tested positive in two initial tests, and officials were awaiting full confirmation.
The Associated Press cites a Health Ministry official as saying that the female nurse had presented at the Alcorcon hospital in the suburbs of Madrid, with a high fever, and was placed in isolation.
A spokesperson for the regional health department told AFP: “Two tests were done and the two were positive.”
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