Russia ups Ebola precaution, says no threat

Russia has taken necessary measures to avert importation of Ebola infectors while developing a specialized vaccine, government authorities said Wednesday.

"In order to identify those infected among arrivals all passengers are invited to walk through special frame detectors that sound an alarm if the temperature of the person's body is above normal," officials of Russia's consumer rights watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, told Itar-Tass news agency, citing a procedure in Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.

The check was applicable to all European flights as there were no direct air links connecting Moscow with the epidemic-hit countries in Western Africa, the agency said.

Rospotrebnadzor chief Anna Popova told reporters on Tuesday that the outbreak of Ebola in those countries posed no threat so far to Russia, and a new Russian Ebola vaccine was undergoing preclinical studies.

"We have an ample supply of diagnosing means, as well as medications for symptomatic specific medical treatment," she said, adding all infection hospitals had been checked for the ability to accommodate and treat patients with particularly risky infections.

Ebola hemorrhagic fever is a highly infectious disease caused by the Ebola virus. The outbreak, by far the largest in the nearly 40-year history of the disease, has affected 1,603 and killed 887 people this year in four western African countries -- Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone -- according to the World Health Organization.