Members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will meet in Havana, Cuba, for two days starting Wednesday to discuss coordinated prevention and emergency response efforts for potential cases of Ebola in the region.

Jorge Juan Guerra Rodríguez, 60, was working as an administrator with a team of Cuban medical personnel sent to west Africa this month to stem the spread of the virus.

Ebola should be taken seriously, health officials said, adding that extreme measures like closing borders or declaring a state of emergency are not necessary to prevent and control the virus if it were to appear.

NEW YORK – New York's mayor said Friday that the city's health system is fully equipped to handle Ebola after a doctor who had been infected in West Africa was hospitalised in the U.S.' largest city.

The cruise ship carrying a Texas health-care worker who "may have" handled lab specimens from Dallas Ebola victim Thomas Eric Duncan is headed back to the United States after Mexican authorities failed to grant permission for the ship to dock off the coast of Cozumel, according to a Carnival spokeswoman.

Doctors at the Tomás Casas Hospital in Costa Rica’s southern region on Wednesday evening dismissed rumors of an alleged case of Ebola at their medical facility as false.

"Ebola is not a terribly infectious disease," said Joel Selanikio, a former U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) epidemiologist. "It's quite difficult to get."

Amid news of the first case of Ebola in the United States and a recent jump in the number of migrants entering Costa Rica illegally, National Police have activated an infectious illness protocol at the country’s borders, according to National Police Director Juan José Andrade.

NEW YORK — Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, died from the virus Wednesday while in isolation at a Dallas hospital, ending a case that helped bring into sharp focus the nation's risk from the disease.

Directors of 10 public hospitals in Costa Rica's Social Security System, or Caja, on Wednesday said they are implementing preventive measures to detect and, if necessary, handle possible cases of the Ebola virus here. The announcement followed confirmation Tuesday of the first case of Ebola in the United States.