Breaking: Fears Ebola has reached Australia.

Update:

A Perth woman has tested negative to carrying the deadly Ebola virus.

The woman was being treated at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth after showing Ebola-like symptoms, 9News reports. The woman, in her 60s, had recently returned from West Africa.

Update:

A patient is being tested for Ebola in a Perth hospital.

“The hospital can confirm it has one patient who is currently being tested for Ebola and appropriate precautions are being taken until the patient’s illness is diagnosed,” a Sir Charles Gairdiner Hospital spokesperson said, as reported by ABC News.

The spokesperson said the patient’s symptoms were consistent with the disease, but would not provide further details.

“At present, the risk of someone with Ebola travelling to Australia is very low,” she said, the ABC reports. “Even if travellers from West Africa did develop Ebola virus disease after arrival in WA, or elsewhere in Australia, our standard of care and infection control is such that once the disease was diagnosed there would be a very low risk of transmission to other persons.”

Previously, Mamamia wrote…

A man on the Gold Coast has been isolated amid suspected Ebola virus fears.

Paramedics have been suited up to rush the man, who is understood to have returned from The Congo in Africa two days ago, to hospital this morning.

Paramedics were instructed to suit up in protective clothing before transporting him to Gold Coast University Hospital.

A spokesperson from the hospital confirmed it was preparing for an incoming patient who would be ‘isolated and assessed’.

‘We already have processes in place to manage these types of infections,” she said, according to News Corp. “Going by what the WHO (World Health Organisation) has been saying, we have recently done a review and we have an area within the hospital where the patient can be isolated.”

But Gold Coast Health’s head of infectious diseases John Gerrard said it was “exceedingly unlikely” the 27-year-old had the virus after assessing him.

“He’s been assessed in the emergency department and we now believe the chance he has Ebola Virus Disease is extremely small, however we are managing him in accordance with national and state protocols and everything has been implemented,” Dr Gerrard said, as reported by The Brisbane Times.

“I must emphasise, the risk of this patient having Ebola Virus Disease are extremely small.”

About 2300 people have died from the virus this year, according to the World Health Organisation.

More to come.