A 48-year-old British Nigerian woman has been found dead in her apartment in Vomp, in the Tyrol, Austria, after she returned from a trip to Nigeria.

Blood, hair and urine samples of the unnamed woman have been sent to a tropical disease centre in Hamburg for urgent tests.

The woman, who has a British passport, had travelled from Nigeria to Germany where she then flew back to her home in Vomp. Her body was discovered in her flat on Saturday. The woman’s mission in the Alpine Republic is not clear.

Austrian officials confirmed today they implemented emergency measures following the suggestion that she might have died from the Ebola virus.

Results from the Centre for Tropical Diseases in the northern Germany city of Hamburg are expected sometime today.

The doctor who attended the scene where the body was found gave the cause of death as a viral infection.

Police confirmed that they had already ruled out violent crime for her death.

They were alerted to the fact that there might be a problem when a relative had called them to say they could not contact the woman.

Head of the regional health board Franz Katzgraber said that he regarded the risk that the woman had died from the Ebola virus as being at the lower end of the scale.

However he confirmed it was nevertheless vital to implement emergency measures even when there was just a suspicion.

He said only one person has died from the virus in Nigeria and the risk of catching it from a trip to the country was low, and much more likely if somebody had come in from Liberia, Guinea or Sierra Leone.

The woman’s home has been sealed off and emergency services staff including medics who found the body have been quarantined.

A spokesman for the Austrian Health Ministry confirmed that even before the body had been found the staff been wearing protective clothing.

They added that even if the woman did turn out to have died from Ebola, it was unlikely that it would be passed on to anyone else as the infection is transmitted through direct contact with blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person.

In a related development, another Nigerian woman has been reported dead in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Media reports in the country said the 35-year-old Nigerian was travelling from Nigeria to India for treatment of advanced metastatic cancer.

The woman’s health was said to have deteriorated while in transit at Abu Dhabi’s main airport and, as medics were trying to resuscitate her, they found signs that suggested a possible Ebola virus infection.

The woman’s husband and the five medics who treated her are being isolated pending test results.

Over a thousand people have died from Ebola in West Africa – mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The disease is less than a month old in Nigeria and only four people have died after from it in the country.

•Partly based on a Daily Mirror report. Photo shows a healthcare worker in an Ebola isolation unit.

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