Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola may have beaten virus

The Spanish nurse who contracted Ebola while caring for two infected priests in a Madrid hospital, becoming the first person to contract the virus outside west Africa, appears to have overcome the deadly disease, the government said yesterday.

Tests on Teresa Romero (44), hospitalised earlier this month with a high fever and treated in an isolation unit in a specially adapted hospital in central Madrid, gave a negative result for the virus yesterday, it said in a statement.

Usually patients must take another test within 72 hours to be given the all-clear from the disease. The hospital was planning to test her again a few hours later, the government statement said. She has improved steadily and on Saturday got out of bed for the first time since she was admitted. Staff said she was animated and her appetite had improved.

Although still wearing an oxygen mask, Ms Romero’s left lung was said to be functioning “at 100 per cent” and her viral load is continuing to fall.

She was treated with a drip of human serum containing antibodies from Ebola sufferers who had survived the disease and other drugs which a government spokeswoman declined to name. One was the experimental anti-viral medicine favipiravir, El Mundo newspaper said.

Ms Romero is the only known sufferer from Ebola in Spain. There are a further 15 people in hospital, including her husband, under observation.

US cases

Some of the dozens of people who are being watched for possible exposure to Ebola in the

United States

are expected to be cleared by today, potentially easing concerns about the spread of the disease after two nurses were infected.

A Dallas lab worker who spent much of a Caribbean holiday cruise in isolation tested negative for the deadly virus and left the Carnival Magic liner with other passengers after it docked at Galveston, Texas, early yesterday morning.

The first person to be diagnosed with the disease in the States was Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian who fell ill while visiting Dallas last month.

He died on October 8th, and two nurses who treated him were infected.

No more monitoring

As of midnight last night, some 48 people who might have been in contact with Duncan would no longer require monitoring for signs of the virus, health officials say.

Today more were expected to end 21 days of monitoring, the incubation period for the virus. They would include Duncan’s fiancée, Louise Troh, her 13-year-old son and two other people who have been in mandatory quarantine at an undisclosed location in Dallas.

"They will be free to go... It will expire for them at midnight tonight and that's going to be a good thing for those families who've been through so much and we're very happy about that," Clay Jenkins, Dallas County's top official, said in an interview on ABC's This Week.

There are still 75 health workers in Dallas who have isolated themselves and are being monitored.

The Pentagon said yesterday it would create a military emergency response team of infectious disease doctors, nurses and trainers to help in the event of a US domestic Ebola crisis. – (Reuters)