UK exposed to greater Ebola risk unless flights to west Africa cut
THE RISK of Ebola being imported into the UK before the end of October is as high as 50 per cent, scientists have predicted.
Heathrow’s status as one of the world’s biggest travel hubs puts the UK at great risk of a traveller entering the country unknowingly carrying the virus.
But scientists have calculated that with an 80 per cent reduction in travel – by cancelling routes to west Africa – the risk would fall to 15 per cent.
Meanwhile, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the US was fighting for his life at a Dallas hospital yesterday and appeared not to be receiving any of the experimental medicines for the virus, the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
Thomas Eric Duncan became ill after arriving in the Texas city from Liberia two weeks ago. The hemorrhagic fever has killed at least 3,400 people out of at least 7,490 probable, suspected and confirmed cases.
CDC director Dr Thomas Frieden told CNN that doses of the experimental medicine ZMapp were “all gone” and that it was “not going to be available anytime soon.”