Health authorities have played down an Ebola scare at the Commonwealth Games after it emerged a Sierra Leone athlete was tested for the killer virus.

Road cyclist Moses Sesay, 32, was admitted to a Glasgow hospital last week after feeling unwell and doctors tested him for various conditions, including Ebola - which is blamed for 729 deaths in an outbreak in four west African countries.

But Sesay, whose homeland has declared a public health emergency, was given the all-clear and released from hospital in time to compete in the men's individual time trial at the Games yesterday.

He told the Daily Mirror: "I was admitted for four days and they tested me for Ebola. It came back negative but they did it again and this time sent it to London, where it was also negative."

A spokesman for Glasgow 2014 said: "There is no Ebola in the Athletes Village of the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games.

"We can confirm an athlete was tested for a number of things when he fell ill last week, including Ebola. The tests were negative and the athlete competed in his event on Thursday.

"We are dismayed by some of the sensational and misleading headlines to date."

A spokeswoman for Health Protection Scotland added it was an isolated incident and no other athletes were tested. "No one has tested positive for Ebola in Scotland," she said.

Commenting on how Scotland is dealing with any potential Ebola cases, Dr Colin Ramsay, of Health Protection Scotland, told BBC Radio Scotland: "There's been no programme of actively screening athletes simply because of the Commonwealth Games.

"The situation is that if someone presents with symptoms suggestive of the possibility of Ebola virus infection and who has come from a country affected by the current outbreak - and that's Sierra Leone and Guinea and Liberia - they would be investigated accordingly and that would involve managing them with a set of standard precautions."

He added: "People in this sort of situation would be investigated for a number of conditions, not just Ebola. Sometimes people have more common diseases such as malaria so they are given a battery of tests to exclude all these diseases but there are special tests that would be done for Ebola in these circumstances if someone has been in a country affected by the outbreak in the relevant period."

Asked how confident he is that doctors in Scotland are prepared to deal with any possible carrier of Ebola in the country, he replied: "Steps have been taken to remind healthcare practitioners across the whole of the UK about being aware of Ebola infection, particularly in people coming from these affected countries.

"There are a standard set of guidelines which are applied in these situations, there are algorithms which people have access to and it's a process of taking an appropriate history, identifying what symptoms people are affected by and identifying whether they have been travelling from the relevant country.

"Guidelines have been given out so hopefully people should be aware of the possibility and know what to do."