A man has been hospitalised in Poland pending blood tests on whether he has the Ebola virus, but he had not travelled to Africa and the tests were being conducted as a precaution only, a health official said.
The 31-year-old man called for an ambulance on Monday, saying he was feeling unwell, and was taken to the Bieganski hospital in Lodz, about 130 km (80 miles) west of the Polish capital, according to Zbigniew Solarz, a spokesman for the local epidemiological service.
The symptoms he was showing could also be caused by a number of other diseases, for example malaria, Solarz said.
The man told medical staff that he had been in Germany where he had come into contact with people from Guinea, in West Africa, said Jan Bondar, a spokesman for Poland's sanitary inspectorate. Guinea, along with neighboring Sierra Leone and Liberia, has seen the worst outbreaks of the Ebola virus.
But Bondar also said it was unlikely the man could have been infected that way. He said he had not heard of any Ebola cases in Germany, and the man had not traveled to Africa himself.
"The man's blood is being tested. I think the result should be known tomorrow in the afternoon. I think this was an excess of caution."
More than 4,000 people have died of the viral haemorrhagic fever in West Africa, mostly in Liberia, neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea. It has also reached Nigeria, Senegal, Spain and the United States but outbreaks have been contained so far.