Scientists are predicting that there is a 75 per cent chance the Ebola virus could reach Europe before the end of the month.
Virus experts have used Ebola spread patterns and airline traffic data to predict that by October 24, there is a 75 per cent chance Ebola will have spread to France and a 50 per cent likelihood it will have been imported into Britain.
“It’s really a lottery,” Derek Gatherer from Britain’s Lancaster University said.
He has based the predictions on the airline capacity remaining the same but even if the number of travellers is cut by 80 per cent to reflect flights to the region stopping, France’s risk is still 25 per cent and Britain’s is 15 per cent.
The deadly Ebola haemorrhagic fever virus has killed more than 3,400 people since it began in West Africa in March and has now started to spread faster, infecting almost 7,200 people so far.
In recent weeks, it has been spread to Nigeria, Senegal and the United States – where the first case was diagnosed on Tuesday in a man who flew in from Liberia – by unwitting travellers carrying the virus.
The scientific data suggests France is among countries most likely to be hit next because the worst-affected countries – Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia – include French speakers and have busy travel routes back.
Britain’s Heathrow airport is one of the world’s biggest travel hubs.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has not placed any restrictions on travel and has encouraged airlines to keep flying to the worst-hit countries while British Airways and Emirates airlines have suspended some flights.
But the professor who led the research said the risks change every day the epidemic continues.
“This is not a deterministic list, it’s about probabilities – but those probabilities are growing for everyone,” Alex Vespignani from Northeastern University in Boston said.
“It’s just a matter of who gets lucky and who gets unlucky.”
US patient in critical condition
Meanwhile, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States was fighting for his life at a Dallas hospital.
Thomas Eric Duncan became ill after arriving from Liberia two weeks ago.
A spokesman for the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital said he remained in a critical condition.
The head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said he was scheduled to brief president Barack Obama on the issue on Monday.
Dr Thomas Frieden told reporters he understood Mr Duncan had not received any of the experimental medicines for the virus.
He said doses of the experimental medicine ZMapp were “all gone” and the drug was “not going to be available anytime soon” while a second experimental drug could be difficult to use and could actually make someone sicker.
“As far as we understand, experimental medicine is not being used,” Dr Frieden said.
“It’s really up to his treating physicians, himself, his family what treatment to take.”
In the US state of Nebraska, a hospital said it was preparing for the arrival of an Ebola patient who contracted the virus in Liberia.
Nebraska Medical Center spokesman Taylor Wilson would only identify the patient as a male US citizen, due to arrive on Monday.
But the father of Ashoka Mukpo, a freelance cameraman working for NBC News who contracted Ebola in Liberia, told reporters his son was going to Nebraska for treatment.
Reuters