Over the past few weeks, 15 people have been tested for the ebola virus in the Netherlands, the public health institute RIVM said on Monday.

They were tested after becoming ill on their return from an at-risk area, the RIVM said. ‘These are people who have gone to their family doctor and then been referred on for tests,’ a spokesman said.

Two people are currently under observation in hospital. One, who has just returned from an ebola area, is at the Radboud medical centre in Nijmegen.

The other is one of two doctors who had been possibly exposed to the virus while working at a malaria clinic in Sierra Leone. She has been confirmed with malaria and tests will show tomorrow if she also has ebola, the RIVM said.