Authorities in DR Congo are testing all 255 passengers on a ship stranded on the Congo River for Ebola and cholera, the BBC reported, BTA reported.
The Yingfeng 2, operated by a Chinese company, was stopped at the port of Bende Bende, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) upriver from the capital Kinshasa.
DR Congo's Health Minister Roger Kamba said the tests were being carried out as a precautionary measure after a passenger with a high fever and diarrhea who had disembarked at a previous stop died in hospital. Two more adults, a three-year-old child and a newborn have died.
Teams from the health ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) have boarded the vessel and deployed a mobile laboratory to carry out tests.
“So far, no one has tested positive and it is likely that no one will test positive after the 21-day incubation period,“ Kamba told journalists.
According to the BBC, the vessel set sail from Kisangani - the third largest city in DR Congo - about two weeks ago. Ebola cases have recently been reported there, with at least four people dying.
Kamba added that contrary to earlier reports, no Ebola cases had been reported in Mongala province, where the passenger who later died disembarked.
The vessel had travelled more than 1,700 kilometres downriver to the capital Kinshasa before being stopped.
Security services have been ordered to quarantine the Infun-2 off the coast in accordance with WHO standards to prevent the virus from spreading to the capital.
The DR Congo is battling its 17th Ebola outbreak, declared on May 15. It is caused by the rare Bundibujo strain of the virus, which has not been detected for more than a decade. There is no specific treatment or approved vaccine for it, although the first human trials of a vaccine have begun in the UK.
Three months after the outbreak was declared, the number of infected and dead continues to rise.
According to official figures, 3,973 cases of the virus have been confirmed so far, and 1,801 people have died, making the current outbreak the second deadliest in the country's history.