German health authorities say a second American infected with Ebola is in Germany for treatment, roughly two months after the first U.S. patient arrived in the country.
A spokesman for Germany’s Health Ministry on Monday said the patient landed at Frankfurt Airport overnight and was taken to the Frankfurt University Hospital.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had previously said the patient is a U.S. citizen working for a humanitarian organisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The person tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, which is currently circulating in the country. It was initially unclear whether the patient was a man or a woman.
Frankfurt University Hospital said the patient was showing symptoms of the disease but was in “stable” condition.
Timo Wolf, head of the hospital’s special isolation unit for highly infectious diseases, said the transfer had gone smoothly.
Ebola is a contagious and potentially fatal disease that can spread through direct contact and exposure to bodily fluids.
The latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been particularly difficult to contain, partly because there is currently no vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain.
Patients with Ebola are transported in specially equipped aircraft and treated in high-security isolation units separated from regular hospital wards.
Germany’s Health Ministry stressed that there was therefore no risk to the public or to other patients.
The first U.S. patient infected with Ebola, a doctor, arrived in Germany in May and was admitted to Berlin’s Charité hospital.
Doctors said the patient’s condition had at one point been life-threatening, particularly during the transfer from Africa to Germany.
The patient was discharged after around two weeks of treatment.
The doctor’s wife and four children, classified as high-risk contacts, were also quarantined at the hospital but never developed symptoms.
The Bundibugyo strain was detected in Europe for the first time in late June, when a humanitarian doctor returning from eastern Congo tested positive in France.
He was isolated immediately after arriving in the country and was discharged from hospital without symptoms after testing negative in early July.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has recorded 702 confirmed deaths and 1,926 laboratory-confirmed Ebola cases as of Sunday.
According to the government, 318 patients have recovered.
Health experts say no previous Ebola outbreak has spread as rapidly as the current epidemic.
During the deadliest Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 and 2015, more than 11,000 people died.
Germany treated three Ebola patients during that outbreak, although one UN employee who was transferred to Leipzig later died of the disease. (dpa/NAN)
