The number of people known to have died in the worst Ebola outbreak on record had risen to 4,033 out of 8,399 cases in seven countries by Wednesday of this week, the World Health Organisation has said.
The death toll includes 2,316 in Liberia, 930 in Sierra Leone, 778 in Guinea, eight in Nigeria and 1 in the United States. The data include one case each in Spain and Senegal but no deaths. A separate Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 43 people out of 71 cases.
The data was released shortly after it was confirmed that seven more people have been admitted to a Spanish hospital unit monitoring possible Ebola cases where nurse Teresa Romero, the first person to contract the deadly virus outside West Africa, remains seriously ill.
With recriminations growing over how Ms Romero became infected at the Madrid hospital, Spain's prime minister Mariano Rajoy said it was extremely unlikely that the disease would spread in Spain.
“Our first priority is Teresa Romero – she is the only person that we know has the illness,” he told reporters on the steps of the specially-adapted Carlos III hospital, surrounded by medical staff.
A hospital spokeswoman said 14 people were now under observation or being treated, including Ms Romero’s husband.
The seven new admissions late yesterday included two hairdressers who had given Ms Romero a beauty treatment before she was diagnosed, and hospital staff who had treated the 44-year-old nurse after she was admitted on Monday.
All had come voluntarily to be monitored for signs of the disease, although none of the 14 has so far tested positive for the disease except Ms Romero, whose condition was described by the hospital as serious but stable.
Mr Rajoy said he had set up a committee headed by the deputy prime minister to handle the crisis, five days after news first broke of Ms Romero’s infection.
Ms Romero was infected in the hospital as she treated two Spanish missionaries who had caught the haemorrhagic fever in West Africa and she remained undiagnosed for days despite reporting her symptoms. Today, the nurse’s husband could be seen staring out of the window of his hospital room, dressed in a blue surgical robe.
Concern has risen elsewhere in Europe after Macedonia said it was checking for Ebola in a British man who died there yesterday, although authorities said it was unlikely he had the disease. A Prague hospital was testing a 56-year-old Czech man with symptoms of the virus.
The Ebola virus causes fever, vomiting and diarrhoea and sometimes internal bleeding, and is spread through direct contact with body fluids. About half of those infected in West Africa have died.
Spanish labour unions accused the government of trying to deflect the blame on to Ms Romero for the failings of its health system, after the European Union asked Spain to explain how the virus could have been spread on a high-security ward.
The top regional health official in Madrid, Javier Rodriguez, has said Ms Romero took too long to admit she had made a mistake by touching her face with the glove of her protective suit while taking it off.
“She has taken days to recognise that she may have made a mistake when taking off the suit. If she had said it earlier, it would have saved a lot of work,” he said in a radio interview.
El Mundo newspaper published a cartoon on Friday showing Mr Rajoy and other officials of his People’s Party pointing at the nurse under the caption: “Protocol for passing on blame”.
"They will find any way to blame her," Ms Romero's brother, Jose Ramon, told the daily El País. "Basically, my sister did her job ... and she has become infected with Ebola."
(Reuters)