All four suspected cases of Ebola in Spain test negative

Four people suspected of having Ebola in Spain have tested negative in a first round of tests.

Deputy prime minister Soraya Saenz Santamaria said the four people taken into hospitals on 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 on Thursday and a person who travelled in the same ambulance used to hospitalise infected Spanish nursing assistant Teresa Romero on October 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 Ms Romero’s infection was almost under control and there was increasingly less reason to be worried.

Meanwhile, France’s government has announced 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.