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Phelps. ‘And I can’t stress that enough. The Heathrow incident was contained with apparent ease because of the expertise of the people involved. The African outbreak you’re thinking of was made to appear worse than it actually was by the poor practice in the local hospitals and a lack of knowledge among the staff about how the disease was spread. Using the same syringe needle for several patients was common practice at that time, and still is in many African hospitals. You can work out for yourselves what happens when you get a case of Ebola among them: the disease spreads faster than bad news. Another factor in the Zaire outbreak was nursing care. In African hospitals, basic nursing care tends to be carried out by the patients’ families. They, of course, cannot be expected to have any notion of aseptic technique, so they come into contact with contaminated body fluids and then go down with the disease themselves. That’s why the African outbreaks appeared to suggest that the virus was airborne and could spread like wildfire.’
    ‘Can we be perfectly sure there’s no danger of a general outbreak arising from the Heathrow incident?’ asked a female voice.
    ‘Absolutely. The patient, Barclay, was the source of the outbreak, if you want to call it that. The others contracted the disease by coming into contact with his body fluids. Barclay and all the others who died were cremated, so we are confident that the virus died with them.’
    ‘What about the other passengers?’ asked a man who identified himself as Chisholm, a professor of virology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
    ‘What about them?’
    ‘Isn’t there a chance that they might still be incubating the disease?’
    ‘No. We’re talking about an incubation time of four to ten days. That time has passed and everyone is still okay.’
    ‘It’s four to ten days for Ebola,’ the professor reminded him.
    ‘A fair point,’ agreed Phelps. ‘I suppose it is conceivable that this virus might have a longer incubation period than Ebola, but not judging by the rapidity with which the stewardess and the others went down with it after coming into contact with Barclay.’
    ‘But they had direct contact with Barclay,’ said the professor, clearly unwilling to let the matter drop.
    ‘What is the point you are making, Professor?’ asked Phelps, his voice betraying slight impatience.
    ‘Merely that some of the other passengers might have received smaller initial doses of the virus and therefore might conceivably take longer to go down with the disease.’
    ‘What did you have in mind?’
    ‘A cough or a sneeze from Barclay would have given rise to small fluid droplet particles, which could for all intents and purposes be deemed to be body fluids.’
    ‘I take your point, Professor, and we did consider that aspect, but the surviving stewardess was able to tell us that Barclay did not have any coughing or sneezing fits while he was on board the aircraft, although he did vomit once.’
    The professor’s silence emphasised his point.
    Phelps appeared to develop a slight tic below his left eye. ‘Well, as of this morning, all the other passengers are absolutely fine,’ he said, hoping to put an end to speculation.
    ‘Am I right in thinking that this new virus appears to have a hundred-per-cent mortality rate?’ asked Heathrow’s chief medical officer. ‘There were no survivors, were there?’
    ‘You’re quite right,’ said Phelps, ‘but thankfully there were only a small number of patients and therefore that is perhaps not significant in a statistical sense. It is true, however, that they all died.’
    ‘So in that respect the disease could be said to be even worse than Ebola?’
    ‘Yes, on the basis of just five cases,’ agreed Phelps. ‘Ebola itself has a seventy- to eighty-per-cent mortality rate. It would be quite unusual to find anything more deadly than that. Let’s hope we’ve seen the last of this particular bug so