Dead Briton in Macedonia did not have Ebola

A British man who died in Macedonia displaying Ebola-like symptoms did not have the disease, results from a German lab analysis showed, an official said on Saturday.

“The patient did not have the Ebola virus,” health ministry spokeswoman Jovanka Kostovska told reporters.

An autopsy to determine the cause of his death was being undertaken, she said.

Thirty-five people quarantined after it was thought they had contact with him were to be released.

The British man died in the Macedonian capital Skopje on Thursday after displaying fever and severe vomiting, symptoms associated with Ebola.

Initial tests in Macedonia showed it was highly unlikely that the man had Ebola, but authorities sent samples to a laboratory in Hamburg for further analysis.

Macedonian authorities quarantined 25 people from the hotel where the man had been staying, including a fellow Briton, along with 10 people in the hospital where he was admitted.

The head of the hospital, Zvonko Milenkovic, said Saturday that Briton’s symptoms may be of various illnesses but excluded any infectious disease.

Macedonian official have not named the victim, saying only that he was born in 1956.

He arrived in Macedonia from London on October 2 and was not thought to have travelled to any of the west African countries affected by the Ebola virus, his friends were reported to have said.

The current Ebola outbreak, the worst on record, has claimed more than 4,000 lives since the start of the year, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

A nurse in Spain this week became the first person to contract the killer virus outside Africa, after caring for two repatriated Ebola patients who later died at a Madrid hospital.