Ebola suspect in Spain given all clear after tests

Tests showed a man admitted into hospital on suspicion of being infected with the deadly Ebola virus in Spain was clear of the disease, health authorities said on Sunday.

The authorities had activated its protocols for a possible case of Ebola after a Nigerian man, who had recently returned from the country, was taken to the Sant Joan Hospital on Saturday night after developing symptoms -- high fever, weakness, vomiting and hemorrhaging -- similar to those of the virus, which has claimed over 1,000 lives in the ongoing outbreak in West Africa.

The man who was accompanied by a woman not admitted as a patient, was initially treated in the Alicante General Hospital, but transferred to the Sant Joan Hospital, the hospital equipped to deal with possible Ebola cases in the region, after the medical team noted his symptoms.

But the Valencia region health department said on Sunday that " the samples analyzed by the Microbiology Institute have tested negative for the Ebola virus."

The patient was in a stable condition in an isolation ward and he has been put there pending the test results as a precaution to protect others from a possible contagion of the deadly virus, it said in a statement.

"At the moment it is only a suspicion, like others we have had in the region and that is why we have activated the protocol against Ebola," a spokesperson for the Valencia regional government told Spanish TV network RTVE earlier in the day.

Earlier this week, Miguel Pajares, a 75-year-old missionary, who had been working in Liberia, died of the illness in the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid after being flown home for treatment, becoming the first European to die in the current outbreak.

Spain this week put into practice measures to guard against passengers on the four direct flights per week between Nigeria and Madrid bringing the virus into Spain and thus Europe.