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Health officials are investigating whether the first Ebola patients confirmed in Nigeria and Kenya came into contact at Uganda's main airport on the same day this month, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday.

Both patients passed through Entebbe International Airport on 3 October, according to Dr Wessam Mankoula, the agency's head of emergency preparedness and response. Investigators are examining whether they were exposed through shared equipment, a shared space or some other interaction. Mankoula described such an encounter as one possible scenario and stressed that no link had been established between the two infections.

"One of the issues we are currently investigating has been some sort of interaction between the two cases at the airport," he told journalists at an online briefing.

The Nigerian patient is a 42-year-old Ugandan-born woman who lives in Abuja and is married to a Swiss diplomat. She returned to Nigeria on 3 October after spending about two and a half weeks in Uganda, changing planes in Addis Ababa, where she had a two-hour stopover. Her husband, who travelled with her, is in isolation but has not developed symptoms, Switzerland's foreign ministry told the Reuters news agency.

She fell ill four days after reaching Abuja and sought care at two private health facilities before testing positive for Ebola on 20 October. The World Health Organization says she is being treated in isolation and her condition is stable.

The Kenyan patient was a man who had travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo through Uganda and arrived in Nairobi on 3 October. He later died, becoming Kenya's first recorded Ebola death in the current outbreak. Kenya has since confirmed nine infections in total, all traced back to him.

Kenya's Health Ministry says it has identified 135 contacts of the first patient and that the first group of people quarantined after possible exposure will begin returning home on Sunday, having completed 21 days of monitoring without symptoms. Director-General Patrick Amoth said the remaining eight patients were in isolation and responding to treatment. "We are not out of the woods," he said, while urging the public not to panic.

Nigeria had initially listed 44 contacts and has since identified more, most of them health workers at the facilities where the woman was treated, along with a few relatives. Mankoula declined to give a revised total before the government publishes its findings. The country's Centre for Disease Control and Prevention is carrying out genomic sequencing, which should show whether the virus is related to other cases in the region.

Uganda has rejected the suggestion that the woman was infected on its soil. Government spokesman Alan Kasujja told the AFP news agency that it was "preposterous" to link Uganda to the case simply because she had holidayed there. Ugandan officials have said the country has no confirmed active Ebola cases.

Uganda recorded 20 confirmed cases earlier in the outbreak, including 15 imported from Congo, and two deaths before it was declared Ebola-free in August. Its health ministry has also said that travelling through the country does not by itself prove where someone was infected.

The wider outbreak began in eastern Congo in mid-May and is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus. Congo's health authorities have reported more than 9,000 confirmed cases and more than 4,000 deaths, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak in the country's history. The fatality rate is approaching 50 percent, and the virus has spread across eight provinces and 66 health zones.

The WHO's regional director for Africa, Dr Mohamed Janabi, said the situation was now more complex because cases had appeared in both East and West Africa. He called for regional vigilance and urged countries to strengthen surveillance, investigate infections quickly and protect frontline health workers.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with the blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person, or with contaminated objects. It does not spread through the air like influenza, and people are not considered infectious before they develop symptoms. Fever, severe weakness, vomiting and diarrhoea are common early signs.

Several questions remain open. Investigators have not established where the Nigerian woman was infected, whether the two patients actually met at Entebbe or whether both were exposed to a common source. Health officials have also struggled to reconstruct her full movements because opportunities to interview her have been limited while she is in hospital.

The answers are likely to come from three places: the genomic sequencing now under way in Nigeria, a detailed reconstruction of the woman's travel and contacts, and the results of the 21-day monitoring periods in Kenya. The WHO and Africa CDC are expected to update their assessment as those results arrive.

Taiwan closed schools, offices and its stock exchange on Friday and cancelled 931 flights as Typhoon Champi passed close to the island's north-east coast, authorities said, reporting one death and 94 injuries.

The person who died was swept away by waves on Liuqiu, a small coral island south-west of the main island, on Thursday, according to Taiwan's disaster authorities. Most of the injuries were caused by traffic accidents and falls, the fire department said. The government said about 1,300 people had been evacuated from mountainous areas.

The transport ministry cancelled all 262 domestic flights and 669 international flights scheduled for Friday. Ferry services and some rail lines were suspended, while the north-south high-speed railway ran as usual and Taipei's metro operated a reduced service. Work and classes were suspended in almost all of Taiwan's 22 counties and cities; only the offshore Kinmen islands opened as normal.

At midday the storm's centre was about 320km east of Taiwan's southern tip, with gusts of about 191kph, the Central Weather Administration said. Its wind radius of roughly 320km was wide enough to cover most of the island, and forecasters warned of up to 900mm of rain in the northern and north-eastern mountains. Parts of Taipei had already recorded more than 200mm in 24 hours.

The CWA expected Champi to pass just off the north-east coast before turning north towards the Chinese coast and eventually moving towards southern Japan. It was forecast to pass first over Yonaguni, Japan's westernmost inhabited island in Okinawa prefecture.

Forecasters differed on whether the centre would reach land. CWA forecaster Liu Pei-teng told Reuters that landfall could not be ruled out if the storm “stalls, loops, or wobbles from side to side” on approach. At a briefing on Thursday, CWA head Lu Kuo-chen said the typhoon would make landfall and envelop the whole island before slowly leaving on 24 and 25 October, according to the BBC. The agency's track shifted as the storm weakened.

In Yilan county, where the storm was expected to pass closest, authorities distributed sandbags and put amphibious vehicles and inflatable rescue boats on standby. “When necessary, the military will come in to help people, including using amphibious vehicles for evacuations or disaster relief,” said Lee Ming-chen, head of the port town of Suao, which has flooded in previous typhoons.

Further south in Hualien, officials urged people living downstream of a landslide dam on Wanli Creek to leave. The dam was holding about five million tonnes of water on Thursday and could breach in the heavy rain, Premier Cho Jung-tai said. Residents were told to stay away from mountains, creeks and beaches even after the storm passes.

The disruption spread beyond Taiwan. Japanese airlines cancelled more than 160 flights, mostly to Okinawa and other southern islands, and Okinawa Electric Power said 3,630 households had lost electricity. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi urged residents to remain alert to storm-force winds, high waves, landslides and storm surges through Saturday. China's meteorological authority issued its lowest-level blue alert, while Zhejiang province raised an orange alert and warned of large waves.

Champi was the strongest storm in the Pacific this year at its peak. On Tuesday it reached maximum sustained winds of about 298kph over the Philippine Sea, the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, before weakening as it moved north. It is Japan's 30th typhoon of the year, the first time since 2013 that the country has recorded so many, a run scientists link to an unusually strong El Niño.

Taiwan is generally well prepared for typhoons, and its precautions usually keep casualties low. Autumn typhoons are less common than summer ones but do occur. The island's mountains and narrow river valleys make landslides and flash floods the main danger once heavy rain sets in.

Several things remained unclear on Friday afternoon. Officials had not published a full assessment of damage, and the casualty figures could rise as reports arrive from remote districts. It was not yet known whether the centre would cross the coast, how the Hualien dam would hold, or when flight schedules would return to normal. The effect on connecting flights used by travellers from Bangladesh was also not immediately clear.

The CWA said the storm's impact could last nearly two days, with the strongest winds from Friday through Saturday. It was expected to pull away towards southern Japan late on Saturday, after which authorities are likely to lift closures and begin clearing roads and restoring power. Travellers heading to or through Taiwan, Japan and eastern China over the weekend should check with their airlines before setting out.