Ebola scare in Sardinia ends with negative test as Italy maintains low-risk stance

The suspected case in Cagliari

A Congolese citizen residing in Cagliari triggered Ebola protocols on Sunday 31 May after returning from a trip to his home country and developing symptoms consistent with the virus. The man had flown from Kinshasa to Rome's Fiumicino airport via Cairo and arrived back in Sardinia on Saturday 30 May. After feeling unwell the following day, he called emergency services and was transported in biocontainment to the Santissima Trinità hospital in Cagliari. The operation to extract him from his home on Via Manno in the city centre involved police, firefighters, and local police, with the street closed for an hour. Medical staff in aseptic suits and masks entered the residence to retrieve the patient.

Testing and result

Samples were flown by military helicopter to the Lazzaro Spallanzani National Institute for Infectious Diseases in Rome, Italy's reference centre for highly infectious diseases. The health ministry announced on Monday 1 June that the test for Ebola had come back negative. The patient remains under observation, but the immediate public health alert has been resolved.

The test for Ebola carried out yesterday on the patient who returned to Sardinia from Congo has come back negative.

Italy's preparedness framework

Italy has maintained a structured alert system since the Ebola outbreak was declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo. An ordinance signed by Health Minister Orazio Schillaci requires anyone arriving from the DRC or Uganda — directly or indirectly, by any means of transport — to declare their origin within 24 hours if they have been in those countries during the preceding 21-day incubation period. The system classifies travellers into five risk levels, from very low to very high, based on exposure history and symptom presence. Fiumicino airport serves as the national health hub, and every region must designate infectious disease reference centres. The national centre is the Spallanzani in Rome.

Other recent scares in Italy

This was not the first suspected Ebola case in Italy since the outbreak began. A female surgeon who had operated on a patient later found positive for the virus in Congo also tested negative upon her return. Two additional individuals remain in isolation at the Sacco hospital in Milan, but their tests have likewise come back negative. To date, no positive Ebola case has been recorded in Italy.

The risk in Italy remains very low.

The outbreak in Africa

Two weeks after the Ebola epidemic was declared in Ituri province in the DRC, Médecins Sans Frontières has warned of a rapidly growing number of cases and severe delays in the arrival of aid and medical personnel. The outbreak involves the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which no approved vaccines or specific treatments exist, and which is particularly difficult to diagnose. MSF deputy operations director Alan Gonzalez stated that no previous Ebola epidemic had recorded so many cases so soon after declaration. According to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the outbreak has produced 1,100 suspected cases, of which 263 have been confirmed. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was visiting Bunia, the epicentre of the outbreak, for his second day in the affected territories.

Never before has an Ebola epidemic recorded so many cases so soon after its declaration. No one knows the real scale and severity of this epidemic.