MOSCOW, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- Upcoming New Year holidays do not increase the risk of Ebola virus spread to Russia, Health Minister Veronica Skvortsova said Thursday.
Possible cases when the deadly virus is brought to Europe could be counted with fingers, Skvortsova said, adding that the danger of the viral infection in Russia is very low, "as it has always been."
All measures to prevent the disease spread in Russia have already been undertaken and will continue to be used, the minister assured.
Four vaccines against the Ebola virus are currently being developed by Russian scientists, while one of them is in the clinical test stage and the rest are expected to be clinically tested in February 2015 in Moscow and St. Petersburg, RIA Novosti news agency quoted Skvortsova as saying.
In October, Russian authorities installed special detectors in Russian airports to monitor suspicious cases of Ebola disease.
Late November, Russia's former Chief Sanitary Doctor Gennady Onishchenko called for serious measures to combat the disease, although Russia was not currently threatened with the prospect of an Ebola epidemic.
Ebola is one of the deadliest viruses known to man, and is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
The current wave of Ebola outbreak started in west Africa early this year. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 7, 000 people have died from the outbreak, mainly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
