HONG KONG health authorities are stepping up surveillance against the deadly Ebola virus, although a Hong Kong woman who fell ill after visiting Kenya tested negative for the disease Wednesday.

    This came as a British man quarantined with fever after a flight from Nigeria tested negative in Birmingham, England, for the virus that is spreading through West Africa in the worst outbreak in history.

    Hong Kong should remain “highly alert” for Ebola, its health chief Ko Wing-man said after leading an emergency meeting to discuss contingency plans in the event of an outbreak.

    Since March, there have been 1,201 cases of Ebola and 672 deaths in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

    Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency Thursday.

    “There are no direct flights from West Africa to Hong Kong, but infectors could still be coming to the city by plane,” Ko said. “Since Ebola is a very infectious disease, suspected cases will be put into isolation as soon as they are identified.”

    The chairman of Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection’s scientific committee on infection control, Dominic Tsang Ngai-chong, said public hospitals would begin to report and test all those who developed fevers after traveling to three affected countries in Africa within 21 days.

    The 39-year-old Hong Kong woman who tested negative developed a fever Tuesday. She was in stable condition in isolation.

    No Ebola case has been found in Shenzhen so far, the city’s health authority said Wednesday.

    Ebola is hard to immediately diagnose as symptoms are similar to flu. The virus has an incubation period of two to 21 days. There is no treatment or vaccine against the virus, which has a fatality rate of about 90 percent, according to the World Health Organization.(Zhang Yang)

    (Related story on P8)