A man admitted to a Spanish hospital on suspicion of contracting Ebola virus is not suffering from the disease, it was confirmed by the Basque Regional Health Authority on Tuesday afternoon.
The patient, a middle aged man from the province of Bizkaya who developed a high fever after recently having visited Sierra Leone, was taken to the Cruces Hospital in Basurto, close to Bilbao and placed in an isolation unit until tests results were known.
The tests were carried out in the laboratory of the Carlos III Institute in Majadahonda, close to Madrid and confirmed the patient does not have Ebola virus, but malaria and this is now being treated.
This is the second time in four days that the protocol for a possible case of Ebola has been activated in Spain.
It was activated on Saturday for a suspected case of the virus in a Nigerian man who showed possible symptoms of the disease in the city of Alicante, but deactivated the following day when tests came back negative.
The outbreak of the Ebola virus began in the forested zone on the borders of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia earlier this year, and spread to Nigeria last month.
The disease has already killed at least 1145 people across west Africa this year.