Ebola dives globally as sick passengers are tested for the deadly virus in Hong Kong and the UK

Fears over West Africa’s Ebola
outbreak have gone global following
the death of a man in Lagos last week,
as health authorities in Hong Kong and
Birmingham, England, have
quarantined passengers showing
possible symptoms of the disease.
In Hong Kong, the state-run China Daily
reported that a woman who recently returned from
Africa with “symptoms similar to the Ebola
virus”—which at the early stages include headache,
fever, and stomach pain—is in a hospital isolation
ward while she undergoes testing. Symptoms can
take up to three weeks to materialize; the virus has
a mortality rate of up to 90%.
In Birmingham, a man who arrived on a flight
from Nigeria has also been taken to a hospital
isolation unit after complaining of “feeling
feverish.” The UK government is holding an
emergency meeting on how to address the “new
and emerging threat” of Ebola later today.
The heightened global alert comes after a man
working for the Liberian government died of Ebola
last week in Lagos, a megacity that is also an
international air travel hub. The presence of Ebola-
exposed patients in Nigeria is especially worrying
because of the city’s density and poor health care
infrastructure. The country’s doctors are currently
on strike over work conditions and pay.
The hospital where Patrick Sawyer—the lone
confirmed Ebola victim in Lagos so far—died has
been evacuated and is being decontaminated.
Authorities have identified 59 people who had
contact with Sawyer, but that does not include the
passengers who shared two airplane flights with him
(from Liberia to Ghana, then from Togo to Lagos);
health workers are still trying to identify them.
According to Canada’s CBC, witnesses said
Sawyer “was vomiting and had diarrhea aboard at
least one of his flights.”
Sawyer was an American citizen with a wife and
three children living in the US. Decontee Sawyer
told the Associated Press that her husband had been
scheduled to fly to Minnesota in August.