Optimism over the end of the West Africa Ebola outbreak, as announced by the World Health Organization on Thursday, may be short-lived as health officials confirmed positive Ebola tests on a male victim soon after.
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“Our level of preparedness and response capabilities are very high and there is not cause for concern”, she said, according to The Post. Guinea, on the other hand, was declared Ebola-free on December 29 of the same year. Today’s announcement comes 42 days – two 21-day incubation cycles of the virus – after the last confirmed patient in Liberia tested negative for the disease twice. The WHO and local partners said they were investigating its origin and identifying the woman’s contacts.
The patient got sick at a town bordering Guinea, said Sidi Tunis, a spokesman at an Ebola response center in Sierra Leone.
This story was first published on CNN.com, “Ebola resurfaces in Sierra Leone hours after World Health Organization declares outbreak over”. According to Brennan, all of the WHO’s 70 field offices are still in place across the three countries to support the national health systems.
Sierra Leone’s northern border area was one of the country’s last Ebola hotspots before it was declared free of the virus on 7 November, and contact tracing was sometimes hampered by access problems.
He notes that the risk of new infections is gradually reducing as the virus clears from the survivor population, but “we still anticipate more flare-ups and must be prepared for them”. The virus can linger in the bodily fluids of some survivors, not producing symptoms but capable of being transmitted to others.
” The governments will need resources to help communities prevent infection, detect potential cases and respond rapidly and effectively”, Ban said.
The report stated that five people who were not part of Jalloh’s parents’ household were involved in washing her corpse, a practice that is considered one of the chief modes of Ebola transmission. Immune-protected areas of the body such as the testes and the eyes can harbor the virus, perhaps for as long as 1 year.
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Sierra Leone was still in a 90-day period of enhanced surveillance after it was declared to be Ebola-free.
