After fears of Ebola in Jerusalem were ruled out on Saturday night, new concerns were raised on Monday that a patient in the coastal town of Kfar Saba, located just outside Tel Aviv, may have the deadly virus.
Dozens of patients and their families were asked to remain at a Clalit health clinic in Kfar Saba, after a patient at the clinic was feared to have symptoms possibly matching those of Ebola, reports Yedioth Aharonoth.
The news site added shortly thereafter that the fears of Ebola had been dismissed.
The suspected patient, an Israeli man, had arrived in the clinic suffering from diarrhea after recently returning from the African nation of Nigeria.
An initial clarification of the man's status revealed that he had not visited the area of the Nigerian city Lagos, which is the only region in the country that is currently recorded as a site of Ebola outbreak.
Likewise, the man had not been treated by the country's health care system, making the chances even slimmer that he had contracted the lethal virus. Nevertheless, to err on the side of caution the clinic decided to keep patients on site until his status could be clarified.
The case in Jerusalem that was ruled out involved a twenty-year-old Nigerian tourist, who was hospitalized in Jerusalem's Sha'arei Tzedek Hospital last Friday complaining of a high fever.
Tests revealed that the tourist, who had been placed in solitary confinement to prevent the risk of spreading the disease, was in fact suffering from an infection in her digestive system.
The tourist, while she did work in the health system in Nigeria, did not visit a hospital in the country in the month before becoming ill, removing her from one of the risk criteria.
Over 1,900 people have died since a recent Ebola epidemic broke out in March, including nearly 400 in the last week alone. 3,500 were infected with Ebola in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and other African countries. The mortality rate from the disease is 51%.
The virus causes a severe hemorrhagic fever, inducing vomiting, diarrhea, as well as internal and external bleeding.