SAO PAULO – A Brazilian man who developed pains and a fever just days after returning from Guinea has tested negative for the deadly Ebola virus but does have malaria, Brazil's healthy ministry said on Thursday.
If a second Ebola test comes back negative, the 46-year-old man will no longer need to be isolated and the people he was in contact with will stop being monitored.
Guinea is one of three impoverished West African countries, along with Liberia and Sierra Leone, that have suffered with the most deadly outbreak of the Ebola virus in recent years. A few cases were also registered in the United States and Europe.
Sierra Leone and Liberia have been declared Ebola-free while a handful of cases remain in Guinea.
The man sought medical help at an emergency room in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais, after developing high fever with muscle pains and headaches two days after arriving from Guinea.
The man, who was not named, was then quarantined and flown in a military plane on Wednesday to Rio de Janeiro, where the government has set up a lab to test blood samples for Ebola according to international security protocols.
(Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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