Ebola: WA patient out of quarantine after being cleared of virus

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Health spokeswoman says patient, believed to be a woman, was being treated for another illness

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A Spanish health worker about to load an ebola patient into a transport plane. Photograph: REUTERS

A patient has been released from quarantine at a Perth hospital after being cleared of having the ebola virus.

A spokeswoman for the North Metropolitan Health Service confirmed the patient was no longer a suspected case and was treated for another illness.

The patient, believed to be a woman in her 60s who recently attended a conference in west Africa, was tested at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.

She was transported there after suffering ebola-like symptoms, including fever.

The spokeswoman could not confirm reports the woman went to Kalgoorlie after returning from west Africa.

A man who arrived at the hospital last week with flu-like symptoms after working in the same region was diagnosed with malaria.

They are the only two people to be examined in WA under suspicion of having ebola.

A Curtin University infectious diseases expert, Charles Watson, said travellers who developed such symptoms within 24 hours of returning from west Africa should be tested.

But he said the risk of any confirmed ebola case spreading in an Australian city was “unimaginably low”.

Watson told ABC radio the successful treatment given to two aid workers after they returned to the US, including use of an experimental drug, showed how ebola could be contained effectively in a western health system.

The ebola outbreak has claimed more than 2,800 lives and infected more than 5,800 people.

Anyone who has travelled from Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea or Nigeria in the past 21 days, has had contact with a confirmed ebola case or ebola-infected material, and has a fever of or above 38C should be tested.