WIKIMEDIA, NASAThe World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday (September 3) declared Liberia free of Ebola transmission for the second time this year. It’s been 42 days since the country’s last laboratory-confirmed case of the deadly infection returned a negative test, the WHO noted. Liberia is now entering a 90-day surveillance period.
The WHO first declared the country free of transmission in May, but in June, post-mortem testing confirmed that a young man in Liberia who was treated for malaria had Ebola. Altogether, the country “has reported 5,036 confirmed and probable Ebola cases and 4,808 Ebola-related deaths,” the Liberia Ministry of Health’s Luke Bawo and his colleagues wrote in a September 3 report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Ebola transmission continues in Guinea and Sierra Leone, although at significantly reduced rates compared with last year’s spread. “In August 2015, Guinea and Sierra Leone reported 10 and four confirmed cases, respectively, compared with a peak of 526 (Guinea) and 1,997 (Sierra Leone) in November 2014,” the CDC Sierra Leone Response Team’s Sara Hersey ...
