Three new cases of the deadly Ebola
virus have been confirmed in Liberia,
the country’s health ministry and
World Health Organization said
Friday, after the nation was declared
Ebola free in September.
An official in the West Africa country
that has been devastated by the worst
ever outbreak of the virus urged calm,
insisting that health workers had the
means to contain the latest outbreak.
“We are calling on the population not
to panic because we have people
capable of putting the situation under
control,” health ministry spokesman
Sorbor George told reporters.
“Let everyone take the necessary
measures to prevent the virus from
spreading,” he added.
WHO said the first confirmed case in
the new outbreak was a 10-year-old
boy who fell sick on November 14 and
was hospitalised in the capital
Monrovia three days later.
The other two patients are related to
the boy.
– Investigation ongoing –
WHO’s Ebola response chief, Bruce
Aylward, told journalists in Geneva
that initial investigations have not yet
turned up a confirmed link between
the 10-year-old and another Ebola
sufferer, leaving many questions
unanswered as health officials try to
figure out the origins of the new case.
“The child has no known history of
contact with a survivor or having been
at a funeral” where an Ebola victim
was buried, Aylward added, a
reference to the fact that secretions
from the corpses of those who died
from the virus are highly contagious.
“I’m sure as we start to move forward,
we will see more clarity,” the UN
official assured, stressing that Liberia’s
emergency response system has
improved drastically since the initial
outbreak of the virus that wreaked
havoc across parts of West Africa.
Aylward said that two of the boy’s
siblings had reported feeling ill over
the last two days, but there was no
confirmation that they were the new
confirmed cases.
“His father and mother had transient
illnesses in the last few weeks, so
obviously that could be one of the lines
of transmission,” Aylward also said.
Liberia, where thousands died at the
height of the epidemic last year, was
first declared Ebola free in May, only
to see the fever resurface six weeks
later, and again in September.
Since the beginning of the outbreak,
Liberia has registered more than
10,600 cases and 4,808 deaths,
according to the latest situation report
from the UN health agency published
earlier this week.
According to the latest toll given by
WHO, the epidemic that started in
December 2013 has left more than
11,300 dead, mainly in the west
African states of Guinea, Liberia and
Sierra Leone, out of almost 29,000
cases.
Friday’s news comes just days after the
last known Ebola case in Guinea, a
three-week old girl, had was declared
cured on Monday, starting the clock on
a 42-day countdown — twice the
incubation period of the virus —
before the country can be declared
Ebola-free.
Sierra Leone was declared to have
beaten the virus earlier this month.
