War game-style simulations to test Britain’s ability to cope with an outbreak of Ebola will be staged this weekend in hospitals in the north and south of England.

Officials at the Department of Health are drawing up details of at least two simulations which will involve people posing as victims of the deadly virus to assess the real-time response of hospitals, the ambulance service and local authorities. The exercise will take place on either Saturday or Sunday and details of which hospitals will be chosen to handle the mock cases are being kept confidential to minimise disruption to the exercise, an official said.

They may include the Royal Free hospital in north London which has an isolation unit and a dedicated team of nurses, doctors and laboratory staff specialising in dealing with infectious diseases. The Royal Liverpool, Royal Hallamshire hospital in Sheffield and the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle upon Tyne also have infectious disease units that are expected to receive cases. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has acknowledged that it was “entirely possible” Ebola could reach Britain.

“We are planning as we speak,” said a Department of Health spokesperson. “It is going to test the emergency preparedness of the NHS and a number of hospitals are going to be involved. We will pretend there is an Ebola case in this country to test the response of the NHS, ambulance service, local authorities and police to make sure everything works in real time. There may be more exercises, but there will be at least one in the north and one in the south.”

Details of the exercises came amid calls for new screening of passengers arriving at UK airports from west Africa where the virus has claimed at least 3,879 lives according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee, which scrutinises border controls, has called for tests at airports, railway stations and ports as well as greater support for immigration officers to make sure they have the training to deal with the outbreak.

“Our immediate response should be to tighten regulation and introduce measures such as screenings at airports, train stations and ferry ports to ensure that this deadly disease cannot take more lives,” he said.

On Thursday the government resisted such a move, pointing to WHO advice that suggests screening for people with fevers or temperature is better conducted in the exit country.

“The World Health Organisation advice is that it is better to screen on exit from a country to make sure that people who are leaving are not infected, rather than trying to screen people who arrive,” said Michael Fallon, the defence secretary. “At the moment there are no direct flights from Sierra Leone to the United Kingdom. It is very hard to be able to track people who are changing planes and arriving by different means in the United Kingdom. It is particularly difficult because the symptoms may not be obvious for a number of weeks after you actually catch the disease. It is not straightforward.”

A spokesman for Public Health England said it was important to recognise that the chances of infection increase as symptoms such as diarrhoea and vomiting worsen. Corpses are the most dangerous cause of transmission.

“If you are symptomatic [of Ebola] and infectious you are not going to be in a position to be hopping on a plane,” he said.

Earlier, one of the world’s leading experts on the virus played down the risks of a serious outbreak in the UK. Prof Peter Piot, a Belgian microbiologist who is part of the World Health Organisation’s Ebola science group and was part of the team that identified Ebola in 1976, told the BBC: “I’m not concerned about an outbreak in western Europe, in the UK, like we are seeing in west Africa.”

But he added: “We will see other cases in Europe, this is unavoidable. People travel, people come back, people get infected in west Africa – volunteers. So we need to be prepared for more cases like this.”

Public Health England has moved to quell concern among parents about the threat the virus poses to school children after it emerged on Wednesday that a school in Stockport had cancelled a planned school placement of a nine-year-old from Sierra Leone after complaints from parents. Public Health England stressed that the risk of Ebola arriving in the UK is “very low”. And it has told all education and childcare organisations not to restrict the teaching or activities of anyone who has travelled to affected countries if they show no symptoms of the deadly disease.

It has urged school staff to look out for Ebola symptoms including fever, diarrhoea, vomiting, and weakness. Next, if such symptoms are apparent, teachers must establish whether students or children have spent time in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone or Nigeria in the last 21 days. If they have the student or child should be immediately separated from others and an ambulance called. Education staff are also urged to inform emergency staff that a case of Ebola is suspected to ensure that protective equipment is used.

Universities UK, the body that campaigns for higher education organisations, said its members were “closely monitoring” students for signs of Ebola. It said latest advice has been circulated to heads of department, student services, accommodation staff, estate managers and student health centres. It said it was not aware that any restrictions being placed on students who had travelled to affected countries.