Ontario health officials say a patient is being assessed in hospital for possible infectious diseases, including Ebola virus, following recent travel to East Africa.
In a statement sent to Global News, a spokesperson for the Ontario Ministry of Health said testing is being conducted “out of an abundance of caution” and in line with established clinical protocols.
Officials emphasized that all appropriate infection prevention and control measures have been implemented. “There are currently no confirmed cases of Ebola in Ontario,” the statement said.
On Wednesday, the WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there are several factors that “warrant serious concern about the potential for further spread and further deaths.”
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“Beyond the confirmed Ebola cases, there are almost 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths. We expect those numbers to keep increasing, given the amount of time the virus was circulating before the outbreak was detected,” he said.
He said 51 cases have been confirmed in Congo’s northern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, “although we know the scale of the epidemic is much larger.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola disease outbreak caused by a rare virus in Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday.
Public health authorities stress that Ebola does not spread easily and that strict hospital protocols are designed to prevent transmission while investigations are underway.
–with files from Katie Scott