Public Health England has vowed to review its Ebola screening measures after they were branded “utterly illogical” by an NHS doctor who returned from Africa with the Scottish nurse who has contracted the virus.

Dr Martin Deahl, who sat next to Ebola patient Pauline Cafferkey on a flight to the UK from Sierra Leone, told the Guardian that public health was being put at risk by “totally inadequate” screening facilities at Heathrow airport.

He also criticised PHE guidance that allows health workers who have had direct contact with Ebola victims to travel home on public transport once they arrive at a UK airport, but tells them not to catch buses, trains or planes or enter crowded places once they are at home.

In response, PHE confirmed it would review its screening procedures but said they were in line with other organisations that had sent volunteers to tackle the Ebola outbreak in west Africa.

The row over screening measures came as Cafferkey, an NHS nurse based in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, underwent specialist treatment in the contagious diseases unit at the Royal Free hospital in north London after being transferred by military aircraft from Glasgow.

Cafferkey landed at Heathrow on a flight from Sierra Leone via Casablanca on Sunday night before catching an onward flight to Glasgow.

Health officials are urgently trying to track down all 71 passengers on her internal British Airways connection – BA 1478 – from Heathrow to Glasgow.

But Deahl, who was one of 30 NHS volunteers who worked alongside Cafferkey, said it made “a complete mockery of the quarantine arrangements” that fellow health workers were able to take public transport once landing at Heathrow.

“The ridiculous thing about this is the advice says once we are home we shouldn’t use public transport or go into crowded places, or if we do it should just be for short journeys of less than an hour, and yet they were quite happy to let us go home from UK airports on the Underground, [or] on flights to Glasgow, which just makes a complete mockery of the quarantine arrangements,” said Deahl.

In a statement issued to the Guardian, PHE confirmed it would review its procedures in response to this case, but defended its guidance as being in line with other organisations who have sent volunteers to Ebola-affected countries.

PHE said: “We recently updated the existing advice for returning healthcare workers, bringing our guidance in line with other organisations sending volunteers to affected countries, including the Ministry of Defence.

“The guidance states that all returning workers who have provided direct treatment for people with Ebola should avoid long-distance travel and going anywhere where they cannot easily and rapidly obtain medical help if they become unwell.

“This ensures returning healthcare workers have passed the incubation stage before they have direct contact with patients in the UK, and that they have easy access to healthcare facilities should they start to develop symptoms.

Pauline Cafferkey is being treated at the Royal Free hospital. Photograph: PA

“The Scottish patient was on the returning worker scheme and was screened at Heathrow airport on arrival, in line with standard procedures. At this point they were assessed as per protocol and cleared to travel home. This process was overseen by a medical consultant.

“Naturally, we are keen to learn whatever we can from the emerging details of this case and will be reviewing what happened and the screening protocols, to see if anything needs to be changed.”

At a press conference, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she had not seen Deahl’s criticism but that she believed current rules were “robust” but kept under continual review.

“We’re dealing with a difficult situation, clearly most difficult in the affected areas of west Africa [and] we need to learn from cases where cases arise, and hopefully we won’t see any more cases, but it’s entirely possible that we will,” she said, soon after taking part by telephone from Glasgow in a Cobra emergency planning meeting chaired by David Cameron.

“So we will look at those cases to ensure that if there are improvements to be made and lessons to be learnt, we will do that. We have to be open and transparent about that. But it’s [our] view that the procedures in place now are right for the risk we’re facing.”

She said the main line of defence was in the Ebola-affected areas, where there were “very robust and strict protocols and procedures to minimise onward infection from patients to those caring for them”.

The first minister said Cafferkey, whom she declined to name due to patient confidentiality, was “doing as well as can be expected in the circumstances”. Health officials said earlier she had been taken to hospital on Monday morning at a very early stage of her infection.

Sturgeon disclosed that Health Protection Scotland officials had now contacted or left messages for all eight of the passengers deemed most at risk because they were sitting in closest proximity to Cafferkey on her flight from Heathrow to Glasgow airport on Sunday.

Five of those passengers had been spoken to and messages left for the remaining three. So far, 63 of the total 70 passengers on the flight had been reached, either by direct contact or messages left.

Syed Ahmed, from Health Protection Scotland, said: “On the whole, people are fairly calm and are reassured [about the risks] and there doesn’t appear to be any anxiety in the community. So people have taken on board the message from the press conference [on Monday night] and had one-to-one contact” with health officials.

Meanwhile, a further possible patient in the Scottish Highlands, who had been in west Africa, was being transferred to hospital in Aberdeen for precautionary testing. But that patient was thought highly unlikely to be infected, Sturgeon said.

The patient had not been in contact with any positive cases for Ebola nor were they displaying symptoms, she said. “The information we have about this patient leads us to be of the view that this is a very low probability case,” she said. “There is no great expectation at this stage that we’re looking at another likely positive case.”