By Euro Weekly News Media • Published: 12 Oct 2014 • 13:48
A MAN has been arrested after he called a health service hotline and claimed to have just returned from Sierra Leone with symptoms of Ebola.
Suspicious health service staff called National Police who tracked the call back to a 40 year old security guard in Cadiz. It is just the latest in a string of hoaxes and scares that have hit Spain since the first case of Ebola to be caught outside Africa was confirmed in a nurse in Madrid.
In Malaga a 20-year-old-man admitted responsibility for a WhatsApp message falsely saying schools in the city were testing for the virus – a rumour that reached as far as Estepona.
Further reports of Ebola in Cordoba and other Spanish cities have also proven to be false. Yesterday (October 11) Spanish government officials were in emergency session to try to put in place a revised anti-Ebola strategy after severe critisism of present protocols were aired in the media. The condition of nurse Teresa Romero, 44, the first person diagnosed as having caught the disease outside Africa, was said to have improved overnight, with her being concious and in good spirits.
Around the world there has been a rush to put in place more stringent measures, with airport screening for affected travellers being brought in in the US. It has been confirmed that a health worker who helped treat a man who died of Ebola in the US has contracted the disease.
Yesterday authorities throughout the UK carried out drills to test procedures, with actors pretending to have symptoms of the virus testing health services reactions.
Meanwhile the death toll has passed 4,000 in Africa, with UN sources saying the disease is spreading faster than they can cope with.
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