Liberia monitors over 150 Ebola contacts as virus re-emerges
By James Harding Giahyue
Yahoo.com
November 22, 2015
MONROVIA (Reuters) – Liberia has placed 153 people under surveillance as it seeks to control a new Ebola outbreak in the capital more than two months after the country was declared free of the virus, health officials said.
Three Ebola cases emerged in Liberia on Friday. The first of the new patients was a 15-year-old boy called Nathan Gbotoe from Paynesville, a suburb east of the capital Monrovia. Two other family members have since been confirmed as positive and they are all hospitalized.
“We have three confirmed cases and have listed 153 contacts, and we have labeled them as high, medium and low in terms of the risk,” Liberia’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Francis Kateh told Reuters late on Saturday.
The West African country has suffered the highest death toll in the worst known Ebola outbreak in history, losing more than 4,800 people. It has twice been declared Ebola-free by the World Health Organization, once in May and again on Sept. 3, only for new cases to emerge.
It is not known how Gbotoe was infected and Kateh did not offer any explanation, saying that investigations were ongoing. Cross-border transmission seems unlikely since neighboring Guinea has zero cases while Sierra Leone was declared Ebola-free this month after 42 days without a case.
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