WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The first health care worker infected with Ebola in the United States will be transferred from a Texas hospital to the National Institutes of Health near the US capital, officials said yesterday.

“She will be coming to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where we will be supplying her with state of the art care in our high-level containment facilities,” Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told a Congressional hearing.

The NIH is located in Bethesda, Maryland. Pham arrived later yesterday, a statement from NIH said.

Pham was closely involved in the care of a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who was the first Ebola case diagnosed in the United States.

He died of Ebola on October 8 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

Pham was diagnosed with Ebola on October 12 and has been in isolation at Texas Health.

A colleague of hers, Amber Vinson, was diagnosed with Ebola on Wednesday, and was transported to another high-level biocontainment unit at Emory University Healthcare in Atlanta, Georgia.

The haemorrhagic virus spread quickly in West Africa, and has killed more than 4,400 people in the world’s largest outbreak to date.

A Spanish missionary who recently returned from Liberia was hospitalised yesterday at a Madrid unit specialising in Ebola cases after showing signs of fever, officials said.

The missionary is a member of the Hospital Order of San Juan de Dios, a Roman Catholic group that runs a charity working with Ebola victims in west Africa, the government said in a statement.

Two elderly Spanish missionaries from the same order were diagnosed with Ebola in west Africa in August and September and flown home to Spain for treatment, but they both died shortly afterwards.

Health authorities hospitalised three other people yesterday for testing for Ebola.

One of them is among 68 people considered as having had “low-risk contact”.

“Among the 68 ‘low risk’ contacts there is news. One of them developed fever this morning,” Simon said.

The unidentified person was transferred to Carlos III Hospital and the result of the Ebola test is expected today, he added.

A passenger who arrived in Madrid from Nigeria via Paris on an Air France Flight who had started shaking during the flight was also taken to the hospital, the airline and Spanish airports operator Aena said.

Health authorities said an Ebola emergency protocol had also been set in motion in Spain’s Canary Islands after a man who left Sierra Leone on October 8 and arrived at a hospital in Tenerife with a fever.

The man underwent tests which have been sent to Madrid.