Toronto patient being tested for Ebola

A woman wears protective clothing at one of one of the Ebola Centers in Harare, Zimbabwe. Photo: Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi/ Associated PRess

An anonymous patient in Toronto is being tested for Ebola after a media leak late Thursday forced the hospital to go public with the news.

Officials say it’s very unlikely the patient actually has the deadly virus. He or she has a fever and a recent travel history from West Africa, where the hemorrhagic fever has killed more than 3,000 people in recent months as the outbreak continues unchecked.

The patient in Toronto is only being tested as a precaution, according to Gillian Howard, vice-president of public affairs with the University Health Network in Toronto. The unnamed man or woman is being held in quarantine at one of its four locations in downtown Toronto.

The patient is in isolation and the health workers involved are using protective gear until the test results have returned, Howard said.

The hospital is stressing the unlikelihood that the patient actually has Ebola, especially because its initial symptoms are flu-like and the ailment could be a more common and far less dangerous virus.

A vehicle drives up the driveway to the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2014. A patient in the hospital is being teated for Ebola — the first confirmed case in the U.S. (LM Otero/ Associated Press)

A man in Texas tested positive for Ebola earlier this week, and those headlines have increased concern that the virus has spread to North America. But despite its spread in West Africa, the disease is actually fairly hard to contract and doesn’t spread through the air like a common cold. Instead, one must come in contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is already very ill and not just carrying the virus.

A German doctor from Uganda contracted the virus recently as well while working in Sierra Leone.

Cultural differences and health care practices on this continent mean an outbreak is much less likely to spread as quickly here, if at all, Health Canada officials said earlier this week.

There have been several people tested in Canada for Ebola in the past several weeks, but none have had the virus. The Toronto suburb of Brampton prompted one of the earliest scares when in August there were fears a patient there had contracted the virus, but those tests were negative.

The tests on the Toronto patient must be sent to the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg.

— with files from the Canadian Press