A team rushed on to a plane from Philadelphia in the Dominican Republic after a man sneezed and yelled:
'I have Ebola!'. The American passenger, who does not have Ebola, was detained by four officers and taken to the airport's medical centre in Punta Cana as he declared:
'I ain't from Africa'. The remaining 255 people were forced to stay on board for two hours until he was cleared, despite airline staff insisting they believed it was a poor-taste joke. The incident on Wednesday came as the White House agreed to step up medical screening at hospitals across the nation after the first man diagnosed of Ebola in the US died.
The man had reportedly been sneezing and coughing through the four-hour US Airways flight - an early sign of the often fatal disease. A video taken by one of the passengers in the middle of the Boeing 777 shows passengers standing up ready to leave before a flight attendant on a speakerphone tells everyone to sit down. She then started by explaining that 'after 30 years in the business' she is sure 'this man is an idiot'.
'It was a false alarm set off by the passenger who is slightly unbalanced,' Alberto Smith, director of operations at Punta Cana Airport, told
Acento.com.do. He did not elaborate on what he meant by 'unbalanced'. He added that the passenger 'did it for attention', and explained:
'His passport does not show any recent trips to Africa. The closest he came to the continent was in 2012 when he visited Europe.'
Credits: Patrick Narvaez / DailyMail / Youtube
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