The Scottish nurse who contracted the Ebola virus last year is now suffering from meningitis, not of a relapse as initially thought.
Reuters noted that Pauline Cafferkey was admitted to an isolation unit at London's Royal Free Hospital and was believed to have suffered a relapse of the virus. However, Dr. Michael Jacobs, an infectious diseases consultant who has been treating the nurse clarified to media members Wednesday that she was not reinfected.
"To be very clear about this, she hasn't been reinfected with Ebola virus," he said. "This is the original Ebola virus that she had many months ago which has been inside the brain, replicating at a very low level probably and which has now re-emerged to cause this clinical illness of meningitis."
The bacterial virus is an inflammation of the meninges and marked by headaches, fever, sensitivity to light and muscular rigidity. In some cases it can lead to convulsions, delirium, and even death.
Cafferkey was first infected with Ebola last December while she was working in Sierra Leone.
So far the virus has claimed the lives of around 11,000 people, mostly in West Africa.