A potential Ebola case is being investigated in Colchester, England, after a patient who had recently traveled to Africa began showing symptoms of the deadly virus. Health officials temporarily closed part of Colchester Hospital as they work to determine whether the patient has Ebola and, if so, how he or she contracted it.
The patient, who recently traveled to an affected area, is being treated in isolation. Officials said that the temporary closure of part of the facility was to deal with an “infection control issue.”
Officials at the UK Health Security Agency said that it’s routine to test unwell returning travelers for a variety of infectious diseases. Those infectious diseases included other hemorrhagic fevers (fevers that also involve bleeding) such as Lassa fever.
The hospital was deep-cleaned and then reopened several hours after it was first closed. Colchester Hospital is a district general hospital located in Colchester, Essex. It is managed by East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust, and is 70 miles (113 km) away from central London – just 90 minutes away via the A120 and M11 highways…
“If confirmed, this would be the first Ebola case detected in Britain since 2014, when two people were infected in West Africa before travelling to the UK – including Pauline Cafferkey, a Scottish nurse working to curb the outbreak, which killed 11,000 people. Both of those cases recovered.
“This would be the first case of the new Sudan strain of the virus, for which there is no approved vaccine.“
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