The conditions of a 37-year-old nurse who worked with Emergency NGO and was infected with Ebola are slightly worse, hospital sources said Thursday.
“Significant gastrointestinal symptoms developed overnight,” Rome’s Spallanzani hospital, which specialized in infectious disease, said in a bulletin.
“The patient is being fed intravenously”. Also on Thursday, Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin said the patient poses no infection risk.
“All protocols were followed,” she said. “He isolated himself as soon as symptoms appeared, and then he was hospitalized”.
The nurse, who hails from the Sardinian city of Sassari, contracted the virus after a three-month volunteer mission in Sierra Leone for the Italian medical non-profit.
Authorities in Sardinia said Wednesday three of the patient’s relatives have been quarantined for 21 days as a precautionary measure because they hosted the infected nurse upon his return from Sierra Leone.
The WHO said the patient flew from Freetown to Rome via Casablanca, adding it was not necessary to screen other passengers because he developed symptoms more than 72 hours after the last flight.
It was the second Ebola case to be treated in Italy, and the first detected on national territory.
