Virologist gives expert view on the likelihood of a UK Ebola outbreak, mutations and how to contain the deadly virus
By virologist Dr Ben Neuman, University of Reading
Ebola is caught through bodily fluids - sufferers often lose a lot of fluid through diarrhoea and vomiting, and both would contain large amounts of virus.
In hospitals, it is often nurses who have to clean up those fluids - other than handling an Ebola corpse, cleaning up fluids is probably the most dangerous aspect of caring for an Ebola patient.
Ebola lives in the bloodstream, so it is not the sort of virus that could spread easily from someone sitting next to you.
The way it is transmitted is much closer to HIV than to a common cold.
Ebola is a fragile virus that can be inactivated with simple disinfectants like soap or dilute bleach.
In a place like the UK, where the power stays on and you are never far from a working tap if you want to wash your hands, it is much easier to contain the virus than it is in West Africa.
Infrastructure is our best protection.
I don't know of any virus that has successfully made the jump from blood-borne to airborne - that is a big change in how the virus works, and is very unlikely.
Other mutations may help Ebola, which is a bat virus that is very far from its normal home, to adapt to living in humans.
Our experience with other viruses like the 2009 Swine flu suggest that if this happens, the virus is more likely to become less dangerous, not more.
We don't always think about it, but nurses do a lot of the dirty work in hospitals, including cleaning up bodily fluids - that is the way that the infection usually spreads.
Unlike the flu virus, which lives in lung cells and can be spread by coughs and sneezes, Ebola virus lives in the bloodstream.
That makes it much more difficult to catch or transmit.
Ebola begins with flu-like symptoms and eventually develops into a potentially lethal illness called hemorrhagic fever.
This makes the body's blood vessels porous and they start to leak, causing catastrophic internal bleeding and organ failure.
The early symptoms are close enough to other common West African diseases like malaria that they can easily be missed at first.
There are several chemicals, antibodies and other antivirals that seem to stop Ebola in lab animals, but the real test is whether they work in a sick person.
Unfortunately, we don't know whether any of the potential treatments including ZMapp actually work well enough to save a person's life.
It can take hundreds of tests to be able to separate fact from coincidence.
Funds have been made available to start that testing, but like the potential vaccine, it will likely be another month or two before everything is in place to begin the trials.
Read: Husband of Spanish Ebola nurse now in quarantine
Ebola is not a virus that hangs around - when a person recovers completely from Ebola, there is no more virus present that could infect someone.
It can sometimes take a few weeks to be certain that the last of the virus has been mopped up by the immune system, but once it is gone, it is gone.
Read: 11 questions you were afraid to ask about the deadly Ebola virus
I would recommend avoiding West Africa for the time being, but the rest of Africa is no more or less dangerous than it was before Ebola, and there is no need to avoid travelling to other parts of that vast continent.
Despite appearances, Ebola remains contained in a fairly small region and in relatively few people - that is why I think the fight against Ebola is still winnable.