Ebola concerns spread to South America

Nigerian authorities have released a notice stating that the Port of Lagos is unaffected by Ebola and remains open, but ships from Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia may not be allowed to enter ports in the country and will likely face an increased chance of delay.

Elsewhere, Gabon is also preparing to turn away possible affected vessels, and Kenya is shutting its borders to travellers from Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and Kenyan airways will no longer fly those routes. As Kenya is a major transport hub for Africa, this is expected to have a significant impact.

While in Cape Verde, a vessel was quarantined by the authorities after calling at a country with a confirmed Ebola outbreak, local media reported.

Despite this, Ivory Coast’s Port of Abidjan, which was the first port to ban the entry of vessels arriving from a country infected by Ebola, and which neighbours affected Liberia, has now decided to lift the sanction.

To the West, the Brazilian port of Rio de Janeiro is calling for precautions to be taken on vessels with calls or originating in areas of circulation of the virus. The Swedish Club reports that similar procedures will be adopted in other Brazilian ports soon.

Argentina’s sanitary authorities are calling for local agents to reports if in the next 30 days any vessel is expected to arrive from Africa and in particular, advise on the ETA, port of call and identify which ports the vessel has already called at.

Separately, the pilots rendering pilotage services in the River Plate decided their pilots will not board any vessel coming from the infected areas (Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Nigeria) until at least 30 days after departing the affected port.