(Reuters) — Spanish health authorities said on Sunday (October 12) there is still hope for Teresa Romero, the Spanish nurse who tested positive for the deadly virus a week ago.
The 44-year-old nurse was conscious and sitting unaided on Saturday (October 11), as three more people joined 12 others hospitalized in Madrid for monitoring.
“The amount of the virus Teresa has seems to be lowering. It is important to believe there is hope regarding her case. We have to be careful. It is a good sign for hope, but a person who has contracted Ebola is always in critical condition,” Fernando Simon, Madrid’s Coordinator of Sanitary Alerts told reporters at a news conference in Madrid.
None of the 15 others still under observation has been diagnosed with Ebola so far, though theSpanish government is under fire for its handling both of Romero’s case and the threat of a wider outbreak of the disease.
Experts from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the EU agency aimed at strengthening Europe’s defenses against infectious diseases, have visited the hospital where Romero and the other patients were isolated in the past days.
A preliminary report has been passed to the Spanish authorities but has not been made public yet.
“Experts are sure that the infrastructure and the treatment, as well as the protection for the employees, are high quality. But obviously they are here to guarantee that we learn, and that what we learn is put into practice. As we have said before, one of the main issues is concern about the isolation locker rooms because of their small size for specific use,” Simon said when asked about the content of the report.
Reuters images on Saturday showed Romero alert and sitting upright in her hospital room with an oxygen mask strapped to her face and responding to the hospital staff attending to her. She had taken a turn for the worse two days ago, health authorities said, and is still considered critical.
The latest outbreak of the disease has already killed more than 4,000 people, mostly in West Africa, and Romero’s case has raised fears about contagion in Europe and elsewhere.
On Sunday, a health worker in Texas at the hospital treating the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States has tested positive for the deadly virus, raising fresh worries about the spread of the disease.
The worker at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital had been wearing protective gear during treatment of the patient Thomas Eric Duncan, who died last week. The worker reported a low-grade fever on Friday night and was isolated and referred for testing, health officials said on Sunday.
News of the second patient in Dallas came as U.S. authorities step up efforts to stop the spread of the virus.
New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport on Saturday began the screening of travellers from the three hardest hit West African countries.
Liberia is the country worst affected by the virus with 2,316 victims, followed by 930 in Sierra Leone, 778 in Guinea, eight in Nigeria and one in the United States, the World Health Organizationsaid on Friday. Some 4,033 people are known to have died in seven countries from the outbreak, it said.
Ebola is spread through contact with bodily fluids of an affected person or contamination from objects such as needles. People are not contagious before symptoms such as fever develop.
The United Nations said on Friday that its appeal for $1 billion to respond to the West Africaoutbreak was only 25 percent funded.