Fears of the Ebola virus have deepened with word that a second US nurse caught the disease from a patient and flew across the Midwest aboard an airliner the day before she was diagnosed.

A World Health Organisation official said the death rate in the ebola outbreak has increased to 70%.

A US nurse who caught Ebola while treating a Liberian patient who died of the disease has received a plasma transfusion donated by a doctor who beat the virus.

Healthcare experts in the US are criticising a top official for saying a "protocal breach" caused a Dallas nurse to be infected with ebola, while caring for a dying patient.

A US healthcare worker who provided hospital care for an Ebola patient who later died has tested positive for the virus and is in a stable condition.

A medical clinic outside of Boston was quarantined and a patient has been isolated outside the hospital with a possible case of ebola, the Boston Globe reported last night.

A healthcare worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for an Ebola patient has tested positive for Ebola in a preliminary test.

The Irish Medical Organisation says the HSE must do more to ensure Ireland is prepared for a case of Ebola.

US customs and health officials have begun taking the temperatures of passengers arriving at New York’s Kennedy International Airport from three West African countries in a stepped-up screening effort meant to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.

Health officials in Australia have confirmed a 57-year-old woman is being tested for Ebola after returning to the country from Sierra Leone.

The first person diagnosed with ebola in the US died yesterday as the government ordered five airports to screen passengers from West Africa for fever.

The first Ebola patient diagnosed in the United States died today, a little more than a week after his illness exposed gaps in the nation’s defences against the disease and set off a scramble to track down anyone exposed to him.

Three more people have been placed under quarantine for Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nurse became infected, while more than 50 other people are being monitored.

A nurse in Spain has contracted Ebola, becoming the first person known to have caught the disease outside the outbreak zone in West Africa during the current epidemic.

A Spanish nurse who treated two ebola victims at a hospital in Madrid has contracted the virus herself in the first case of contagion outside of Africa, health officials said.

A US man who contracted Ebola while working as a freelance cameraman in Liberia has been flown back to his home country for treatment.

The first person to develop ebola in the US was struggling to survive at a Dallas hospital yesterday after his condition worsened to critical, the director of the US Centres for Disease Control said.

The condition of the man who brought the deadly Ebola disease to the US is now critical, hospital officials have said.

People who contract ebola in West Africa can get through airport screenings and onto a plane with a lie and a lot of ibuprofen, according to healthcare experts who believe more must be done to identify infected travellers.

The head of the UN’s ebola mission has said aid workers are battling against time to stop the ebola virus from mutating and possibly become airborne.

The Liberian man infected with Ebola who took the disease to the United States will be prosecuted when he returns home for lying on his airport screening questionnaire, Liberian authorities said today.

About 80 people are now being monitored for symptoms of Ebola in Texas, health officials said, after a man was diagnosed with the disease in Dallas.

The airline passenger who brought Ebola into the US initially went to a Dallas emergency room last week but was sent home, despite telling a nurse that he had been in disease-ravaged West Africa, the hospital said.