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Ebola screening extended to Manchester and Birmingham airports

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Screening for Ebola is being extended to Manchester and Birmingham airports.

Staff at the two airports will begin checking passengers from at-risk countries after it is introduced at Gatwick and Eurostar’s London terminal next week, according to Public Health England.

Screening of passengers arriving from West Africa, where 4,500 have died in the outbreak, started at Heathrow on Tuesday.

Canada and the US have already introduced increased screening of travellers arriving at airports from West Africa.

France is to check passengers flying to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport from Guinea’s capital Conakry from tomorrow.

About 1,000 people arrived in the UK from Ebola-affected countries in West Africa last month, according to official estimates.

There are currently no direct flights to the UK from the three worst affected countries – Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.

Meanwhile, a health care worker from Texas who had contact with the Ebola virus left the US on a Carnival Cruise Lines ship, currently off Belize.

The woman has been confined to her cabin on board Carnival Magic.

“At no point in time has the individual exhibited any symptoms or signs of infection and it has been 19 days since she was in the lab with the testing samples,” a statement from the cruise line said.

“She is deemed by CDC [Centre for Disease Control and Prevention] to be very low risk.

“At this time, the guest remains in isolation on board the ship and is not deemed to be a risk to any guests or crew.

“It is important to reiterate that the individual has no symptoms and has been isolated in an extreme abundance of caution.

“We are in close contact with the CDC and at this time it has been determined that the appropriate course of action is to simply keep the guest in isolation on board.”

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