Credit CDC PHIL
# 10,274
After a remarkable 42 days without reporting an Ebola infection, on May 9th the WHO Declared The Ebola Outbreak In Liberia Over, making yesterday 93 days without a case report.
That is . . .until last night, when the Liberian government announced the discovery of the corpse of a 17 year-old male in the village of Nedowian in Margibi County that tested positive twice for the Ebola virus before burial.
The man supposedly died on June 24th, after a three day illness (see FrontPageAfrica report), although epidemiological details are both scant and unverified at this time. Contact tracing is now underway, and we should hear more on this case in the next couple of days.
This report from VOA NEWS.
Liberia Announces New Ebola Victim
June 30, 2015 4:26 AM
The corpse of a 17-year-old Liberian has tested positive for the Ebola virus, Liberia's first reported case since the country was declared Ebola-free on May 9.
Liberia's deputy health minister Tolbert Nyenswah stressed Tuesday that there is no need to panic. He said the victim has been safely buried and the team tracing the victim's contacts has already begun work.
The Associated Press reports the 17-year-old male died on June 24.
The Ebola victim died in Margibi County, far from the borders of Guinea and Sierra Leone, the two other nations hardest hit by the virus. Nyenswah said experts are trying to figure out if the victim contracted the virus during travel.
Margibi County is close to the country's international airport, about 50 kilometers south of the capital, Monrovia.
The latest World Health Organization report shows low levels of Ebola still occurring in neighboring Sierra Leone and Guinea, with 20 cases reported last week between them.
Current Situation
- There were 20 confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) reported in the week to 21 June, compared with 24 cases the previous week. Weekly case incidence has stalled at between 20 and 27 cases since the end of May, whilst cases continue to arise from unknown sources of infection, and to be detected only after post-mortem testing of community deaths. In Guinea, 12 cases were reported from the same 4 prefectures as reported cases in the previous week: Boke, Conakry, Dubreka, and Forecariah. In Sierra Leone, 8 cases were reported from 3 districts: Kambia, Port Loko, and the district that includes the capital, Freetown, which reported confirmed cases for the first time in over 2 weeks.
- Although cases have been reported from the same 4 prefectures in Guinea for the past 3 weeks, the area of active transmission within those prefectures has changed, and in several instances has expanded.
For now it isn’t at all clear how this 17-year-old came to be infected with the Ebola virus, and until that can be answered – and we see if any of his contacts show signs of infection – it will be impossible to gauge just how big a setback this discovery will be for Liberia’s Ebola eradication efforts.
