Ebola Outbreak: Spain Reports 4 New Cases, Expert Fears Virus Outpacing Response

Four new suspected cases of Ebola have been confirmed by Spanish authorities.

Three cases have been confirmed in the capital and one in the Canary islands, these include an Air France passenger who showed symptoms of the disease on the flight to Madrid Thursday, and a priest recently returned from Liberia, reports the Irish Independent.

Two Spanish priests serving in West Africa have already succumbed to the disease and a nurse who cared for the two contacted the virus, the first person outside Africa to be infected by Ebola.

The Air France flight was isolated at the Madrid airport and the passenger evacuated to a hospital in the capital and the plane was allowed to proceed after that, authorities said.

Nearly 4,500 people have died in the outbreak so far and the World Health Organization says that if  proper measure are not taken then within the next two months the number of reported cases might go up by 10,000 every week.

The co-discoverer of the disease, Peter Piot, a microbiologist and a former undersecretary general of the United Nations, told Global Public Square host Fareed Zakaria in an interview that the outbreak was far outpacing the international response, reports CNN. 

"This is the first Ebola epidemic where entire nations are involved, where big cities are affected,"  Piot said. "And I continue to be worried that the response to the epidemic is really running behind the virus."

Piot had earlier expressed fears of a catastrophe if the virus spread to thickly populated large cities like Lagos. He said in the affected countries economies were being destabilized.

"People are massively dying from other diseases that are normally treatable, like malaria, or women die while giving birth because hospitals are abandoned or are full with Ebola patients. So that's a very, very destabilizing factor," he said, adding that the impact of its spread is "beyond Ebola," reports the CNN.