A healthcare worker who has just returned from West Africa has been diagnosed with Ebola and is being treated in hospital in Glasgow.
The woman, who arrived from Sierra Leone on Sunday night, is in isolation at Glasgow’s Gartnavel Hospital.
All possible contacts with the case are being investigated, including on flights to Scotland via Heathrow.
UK Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt confirmed that the woman would be taken to a specialist unit in London.
She will be flown from Glasgow and taken to the Royal Free Hospital in north London “as soon as we possibly can,” Mr Hunt said.
The hospital has a specialist isolation unit and treated William Pooley, the British nurse who contracted and recovered from Ebola.
Low risk
Mr Hunt said the government was doing “absolutely everything it needs to be” to keep the UK safe.
He insisted NHS processes “worked well” after the woman starting exhibiting symptoms.
The health secretary added: “We are also reviewing our procedures and protocols for all the other NHS workers who are working at the moment in Sierra Leone.”
Nicola Sturgeon: Ebola risk ‘extremely low’
Charity Save the Children confirmed the woman was an NHS health worker who was working with them at the Ebola Treatment Centre in Kerry Town, Sierra Leone.
The organisation’s humanitarian director, Michael von Bertele, said: “Save the Children is working closely with the UK government, Scottish government and Public Health England to look into the circumstances surrounding the case.”
At a news conference in Glasgow, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon stressed that the risk to the general public was very low.
She added that the patient was thought to have had contact with only one other person since arriving in the city, but that all passengers on the flights the woman took will be traced.
Ms Sturgeon said: “Apart from other passengers on the flights and obviously the hospital staff since this patient’s admittance to hospital, she, the patient is thought to have had contact with only one other person in Scotland since returning to Scotland last night and that person will also be contacted and given appropriate reassurance.”
BBC
