Spain Ebola Patient May Be Free of Virus, Test Shows

By Charles Penty

Photographer: Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images

An ambulance leaves La Paz-Carlos III hospital in Madrid, Spain, on Oct. 9, 2014. The... Read More

A Spanish nursing assistant who became the first person outside Africa to contract Ebola has tested negative for the virus and her condition is improving, suggesting she may have been cured of the deadly pathogen.
Teresa Romero will have a second test to confirm the result, the government committee set up to handle Spain’s efforts to contain the disease, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. All 15 people in hospital quarantine because they had close contact with her continue to show no symptoms, the committee said.
“She now has no virus and we’re waiting for the
second result,” said Teresa Mesa, a spokeswoman for Romero’s family, in televised comments late yesterday. “I’ve spoken to her and she’s in great form -- she was crying and laughing.”
Romero was diagnosed with Ebola on Oct. 6 after helping to care for two Spanish missionaries who contracted the illness in Africa and died at Carlos III hospital in Madrid. Her Ebola diagnosis sparked a debate in Spain about the readiness of the country’s health service after budget cuts and the adequacy of its procedures for containing the virus.
“Two negative tests are taken as evidence that the virus is no longer in the patient so they are declared cured,” Andrew Easton, a professor at the U.K.’s University of Warwick, said by e-mail today. “They will be subject to follow up for a little time to ensure that there are no residual effects due to the damage to tissues and organs.”

Potential Cases

Two other people at Carlos III who were considered potential Ebola cases have tested negative a second time for the virus, the committee said. They are a person considered a “low-risk” contact with Romero who had developed a fever and a passenger who became ill while on an Air France flight to Madrid after traveling from Nigeria.
Romero is one of three people known to have contracted Ebola outside Africa, all of whom are health-care workers. The other two are Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, nurses who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas after traveling to the U.S. from the West African nation.
Ebola this year has killed more than 4,500 people, mostly in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, and infected about 9,200, according to the World Health Organization.
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