Transmission electron micrograph of the Ebola virusWIKIMEDIA, CDC, FREDERICK MURPHYThree people are in quarantine and more than 50 are being monitored following the first confirmed case of Ebola contracted outside of West Africa. Spanish media reports identified Teresa Romero Ramos as the female nurse who treated two Ebola patients at Carlos III Hospital in Madrid. One of her patients had contracted the disease in Liberia, the other in Sierra Leone. Both of those patients have since died; Ramos remains isolated in the hospital with no official report on her condition, though she told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that she was feeling “a little better.”
Ramos is believed to have contracted Ebola while treating Manuel García Viejo, a missionary who had recently returned from Sierra Leone, in late September. Viejo died on September 26, and the following day, Ramos was scheduled to leave on vacation. But her husband told El Mundo that they had canceled their plans as a result of an accident he’d had at work and that Ramos was instead planning to go to her mother’s. On September 30, Ramos reported having a 100-degree fever to staff at Fundación Hospital de Alcorcón, and she was admitted at Carlos III Hospital on Monday (October 6). The delay in isolating the patient has brought the Spanish government’s handling of the situation under fire, with health-care workers claiming they haven’t received ...
