He said he would chair an emergency Cobra meeting on the issue later. 

 

Mr Hammond said no Britons had been affected¹ so far and there were no cases in the UK, but the government was viewing the outbreak very seriously.

 

Public Health England has issued a national alert to UK doctors amid fears the virus could spread.

 

Last week an infected Liberian man was found to have travelled through a major Nigerian airport.

 

Several West African airlines have now stopped flying to Liberia and Sierra Leone over concerns about the outbreak.

 

 

Mr Hammond told BBC News the government was "absolutely focused" on tackling the threat posed by the Ebola virus, including looking at "whether there are precautions we need to take - either in the UK or to protect our nationals in the area abroad".

 

He went on: "At the moment we don't think any British nationals [abroad] are affected and we are fairly confident there are no cases in the UK.

 

"But it is a threat, it is something we need to respond to and we will be doing so through the Cobra mechanism²."

 

Earlier, the government's chief scientist Sir Mark Walport told the Daily Telegraph Ebola was a threat because of how "interconnected" the world was now.

 

Sir Mark said: "The most dangerous infections of humans have always been those which have emerged from other species. They are a potential major threat to us. 

 

"Emerging infectious disease is a global grand challenge. We were lucky with Sars. But we have to do the best horizon scanning. 

 

"We have to think about risk and managing risk appropriately."

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