4 suspected Ebola cases in Spain test negative
MADRID - Four people suspected of having Ebola in Spain have tested negative in a first round of tests, the government said Friday.
Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz Santamaria said the four people taken into hospitals Thursday with fevers had each tested negative. They will be tested a second time in the coming days.
They include a passenger on an Air France jet that was isolated at Madrid's airport Thursday and a person who traveled in the same ambulance used to hospitalize infected Spanish nursing assistant Teresa Romero on Oct. 6.
The other two were a Red Cross health worker who recently worked with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone and a missionary who came down with a fever after returning from Liberia.
Health Ministry spokesman Fernando Simon said Romero's infection was almost under control and there was increasingly less reason to be worried.
Meanwhile, France's government announced Friday it is strengthening its anti-Ebola efforts even though no cases have been detected in the country.
The prime minister appointed a prominent doctor, Jean-Francois Delfraissy, as Ebola "czar" to coordinate France's international and national responses to the crisis.