RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazilian doctors on Friday were testing a man, who had traveled from West Africa, for the Ebola virus, though the health ministry said he was “in good shape,” and that a fever he presented a day earlier had subsided.
If confirmed, it would be the first known case of the disease in Latin America during the latest outbreak, which began in West Africa in March and has killed nearly 4,000 people.
The 47-year-old man arrived in Brazil on Sept. 19 from Guinea, one of three West African nations at the heart of this year’s outbreak, following a layover in Morocco, according to a health ministry statement.
Officials didn’t provide the man’s name or nationality.
He went to an emergency room in the southern state of Parana Thursday afternoon with a fever, the statement said, and was transferred to a healthcare facility in Rio de Janeiro early Friday.
By late Thursday, the patient had only a slightly elevated temperature and “there was no bleeding, vomiting or other symptoms,” the health ministry statement said. “He is in good shape and totally isolated.”
It said the patient had been in the country for the maximum incubation period for Ebola of 21 days.
Symptoms of the virus, spread through direct contact with body fluids, include hemorrhagic fever, vomiting and diarrhea.
Read more at Reuters
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