The two patients in Israeli hospitals who were suspected of having the Ebola Bundibugyo virus, a virulent strain of Ebola, tested negative for the disease, the Health Ministry said Tuesday.

However, Prof. Jacob Strahilevitz, head of the Clinical Microbiology  andInfectious Diseases Department at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center, told The Times of Israel that the five hospitals designated to treat potential patients are taking “all the necessary measures so that we can be prepared.”

The two suspected patients were hospitalized at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa and Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv. They had both returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country with active Ebola transmission alongside its neighbor Uganda.

Hadassah Medical Center, Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, and Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital are also prepared to take in patients. The Health Ministry has provided the hospitals with personal protective equipment to “secure the safety of the medical staff who are taking care of these patients,” Strahilevitz said.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there have been 896 confirmed cases and 232 deaths as of June 19. WHO has declared it a global health emergency.

There has never been a confirmed case of Ebola in Israel, according to the Health Ministry. There were several suspected cases that turned out to be negative during a previous outbreak in 2014.

Strahilevitz said the chance of the current strain spreading to Israel “remains very low.”

The Ebola disease is a severe, often fatal illness affecting humans and other primates.

Strahilevitz said the virus is transmitted from wild animals such as fruit bats and monkeys to humans who inhabit the same areas.

According to the World Health Organization, the first Ebola disease outbreaks occurred in remote villages in Central Africa, near tropical rainforests.

From 2014 to 2016, a large outbreak of Ebola in Western Africa killed 11,000 people.

During that outbreak, which spread worldwide, “there was a huge investment of resources in finding drugs, and finding immunizations,” Strahilevitz said. “There is now a vaccine against Ebola, and several drugs that can be effective against........

© The Times of Israel