Tourist unlikely to have Ebola, doctors say

A Nigerian woman who was placed in quarantine Friday after arriving in Israel with high fever is unlikely to have contracted Ebola, Israeli health officials said Saturday.

Prof. Jonathan Halevi, the director of the Shaare Zedek Medical Center where the woman is being examined, told Haaretz that chances of the 28-year-old carrying the virus were extremely slim.

Initial blood tests had shown the infection to be bacterial and not viral, he said, but were sent for a second test in order to make sure. Final results were expected later in the day.

Other health officials added that the woman — who worked in Nigeria’s public health system and had come in contact with patients at local hospitals – had not been in contact with at-risk populations for the past month. If she had contracted the deadly virus a month ago, they said, the disease would have been much more advanced than her symptoms indicated.

The woman, a tourist who arrived in Israel on Wednesday, admitted herself to the hospital suffering from high fever.

The Ebola epidemic, which emerged in Guinea at the start of the year before spreading to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, is the worst outbreak since the hemorrhagic fever was first identified in 1976. More than 3,000 people appear to have been infected, and 1,552 have died, according to the latest World Health Organization figures.

Last month, the Foreign Ministry published a warning urging Israelis against travel to Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.