The Chinese team helping to fight the deadly Ebola virus in Sierra Leone has denied a report that eight of its workers who treated patients with the disease have been placed in quarantine.

The denial comes as China is set to send more clinical medics to the four Ebola-hit countries in West Africa. They will help with local measures to combat the virus and treat and care for any Chinese nationals who become infected.

Wang Yaoping, director of the Chinese team in Sierra Leone, told China Daily on Tuesday that no team members have become infected and work is proceeding normally.

Wang dismissed a report by Agence France-Presse that said eight Chinese medical workers who treated Ebola patients had been placed in quarantine in Sierra Leone.

"One of our colleagues was in contact with an Ebola-infected patient, but he has been confirmed safe after a 21-day observation period," Wang said.

The team of nine medical workers and a cook, all from Hunan province, was sent to Sierra Leone in April.

In view of the severity with which the virus is spreading, China is planning to send more medical workers to West Africa.

The workers, mainly from infectious disease hospitals in Beijing, have been preparing for their mission and are ready to leave when asked to do so by health authorities, an information worker at Beijing Ditan Hospital said on Tuesday.

Xiang Nijuan, a researcher at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said, "China now has no laboratory capacity to handle the virus, which requires the highest bio-safety standards. Preventing the virus from entering China is the top priority."

Li Dexin, a senior virology researcher at the center, said it has sent teams of three public health experts to three Ebola-affected countries, but they won't bring an Ebola sample virus back to China for research purposes.

There are no strains of the Ebola virus in China.

An advanced laboratory is being built in Wuhan, Hubei province, and is expected to open in 2016, he said.

Dong Xiaoping, deputy director of the center's emergency response division, said China's health system is capable of quickly detecting any Ebola outbreak and treating infected patients.

Dong said that Ebola spreads through direct contact with the body fluids of an infected person. Viral activity is too weak to infect others during the incubation period, which lasts for two to 21 days. She also urged the public not to panic.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission has distributed clinical guidelines on Ebola response to local health administrations and hospitals