Six more suspected cases of Ebola were identified Thursday in Spain, where a nurse who was the first person known to have become infected outside Africa is showing signs of improvement.
One of the new possible cases, reports AFP, is a Catholic missionary recently returned from Liberia – where the first patient diagnosed in the United States, Thomas Eric Duncan, lived before succumbing to his fatal illness.
Liberia is among the West Africa nations hardest hit by the outbreak.
The Spanish missionary – who belongs to the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios, a Roman Catholic group that runs a charity working with Ebola victims in West Africa – was to be hospitalized in a special unit at Madrid's Carlos III hospital.
Two others were also admitted to the same hospital; one was a person who came close to the infected nurse, and the second, an Air France passenger from Paris who arrived in Madrid, AFP reports.
AFP also reports a Red Cross worker was hospitalized on Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands after arriving Oct. 12 from Sierra Leone – another hard-hit nation –via Brussels and Madrid.
Two others who live with the man but are not sick with any Ebola-like symptoms were placed in isolation in the hospital as a precaution, AFP reports.
AFP notes two elderly Spanish missionaries from the same order as the newly diagnosed missionary became infected with Ebola in West Africa in August and September, were flown home to Spain for treatment and died shortly afterward.
Teresa Romero, a 44-year-old Spanish nurse at Madrid's Carlos III Hospital who cared for the elderly missionaries, was diagnosed Oct. 6 and remains in stable condition, AFP reports.
"She talks slowly but is perfectly lucid," a hospital source told the news agency.
The person who came in contact with Romero and was hospitalized Thursday is among 68 people considered as having had "low-risk contact" with the infected nurse. They have been monitored at home.
The passenger who arrived in Madrid from Nigeria via Paris had started shaking during the flight, and was rushed to the hospital, AFP reports.
Nearly 4,500 people have
died this year from Ebola, mainly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
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