First Ebola case in Liberia, since a month

Hey God have mercy oooo .Liberia has been declared Ebola free country, now that will be reversed as a new case was recorded yesterday, friday 20th march. Read more below.

Liberia Friday confirmed its first new Ebola case in more than a month in a setback to hopes the country would soon be officially declared free of the deadly disease.

The country was the hardest hit at the peak of the epidemic in west Africa and has seen more than 4,000 deaths in all, but was at an advanced stage in its recovery and was expecting to be declared Ebola-free by mid-April before the latest case in the capital Monrovia.

“A woman has been confirmed as an Ebola patient… This is a new case after we have gone more than 27 days without a single case. It is a setback,” government spokesman Lewis Brown told AFP.

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced earlier this month that no new case of the deadly virus had been registered in Liberia since February 19.

It was not immediately clear where the new patient became infected, as all contacts associated with the last known chain of transmission completed the 21-day observation period during which symptoms of Ebola are exhibited, according to the WHO.

A source close to the case, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the woman was the wife of a cured Ebola patient.

According to experts, a patient can still transmit the virus through sex days after being cured.

Surveillance and early warning systems had detected 125 suspected cases in the week to March 15 but none tested positive for Ebola.

Since the outbreak began in December 2013, 24,753 people in nine countries have been infected with the virus, and 10,236 of them have died, according to the latest figures.

All but 15 of those deaths have occurred in Liberia and its neighbours, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

But the tide seemed to have turned in Liberia, which six months ago was reporting more than 300 new cases a week and which still counts the most deaths in the outbreak with 4,283.