The patient who was said to have been showing symptoms of Ebola and reportedly tested at Beirut's Rafik Hariri University Hospital Thursday was never suspected to have been infected with the disease, a hospital official told The Daily Star, saying that hospital workers were conducting a drill.
The doctor responsible for "testing" the patient is “100 percent sure that it is not an Ebola case, but we are treating it as if it was a real case as an exercise for potential future cases," the official said.
Rumors quickly spread that a patient was being treated for Ebola at the hospital, causing some panic and confusion in the country.
The hospital was quickly swarming with reporters demanding answers from officials who initially hesitated to reveal that they were conducting a drill.
The drill was apparently conducted without the knowledge of the Health Ministry which had confirmed that a potential Ebola case was being treated.
Health Minister Wael Abu Faour in the evening said that the patient will be released from the hospital on Friday.
Earlier, a Health Ministry source said the ministry had not yet been informed of the results of the hospital's tests, but said the patient was a man who arrived from West Africa one week ago.
“He did not show any symptoms during his flight [or] when he was filling out the application,” the source told The Daily Star. “But when the ministry followed up on him today, he said he has been experiencing many suspicious symptoms.”
Radio station Voice of Lebanon 100.3 said the patient is a man in his 20s who recently arrived to Lebanon from a West African country through a connection in France.
According to a Health Ministry source, Ebola causes symptoms similar to other viruses, especially malaria. Twelve patients suspected of carrying Ebola had been tested over the past months in Lebanon, none of whom tested positive, the source said.
