UK must be ready for Ebola outbreak to worsen – Jeremy Hunt
Health secretary to give latest estimate of cases likely to emerge in Britain but says risk of infection remains low
Patrick Wintour
The Guardian
Monday 13 October 2014
Britain must be prepared for the Ebola outbreak to worsen, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has said as he prepares to outline the next steps he intends to take to prevent an outbreak in the UK.
Hunt said he would give the latest estimate of the number of cases likely to emerge in the UK in the next three months, when he made a statement in the Commons later on Monday.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It is a question of being prepared; at present the number of [global] cases is doubling every three to four weeks. At present the numbers are very low, but we have to be prepared for it getting a lot worse.”
Hunt praised the 650 NHS staff who had “volunteered to put themselves in harm’s way to go out to west Africa – one of the most dangerous places in the world healthwise”.
He said the advice from Public Health England was that the risk of Ebola to people living in the UK remained low.
“I think there are a lot of misunderstandings and that’s why it’s very important that we get the right training in place and put in place the right procedures.”
He said the main purpose of passenger screening at airports was to identify people who were at higher risk of carrying the disease. “Because the virus incubates for 21 days we need to make sure that anyone that is higher risk – we know their contact details, we are able to stay in touch with them, monitor their temperature on a daily basis so that if they do develop the symptoms we can get to them quickly.
“You pick up on those people by making sure that you have proper interviews of people who may be higher risk when they arrive in the UK so that you have those details.”
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