Ebola resurfaces in Liberia, just three months after all-clear issued

MONROVIA: A new case of Ebola has been confirmed in Liberia, less than three months after the country was declared free of the deadly virus.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a statement that Liberian health authorities had convened an emergency meeting to coordinate a rapid response after the confirmation of the new case, a 30-year-old woman who died on Thursday outside Monrovia, the capital. Health officials immediately began to identify people who may have come into contact with her.

Liberia’s neighbor Guinea, which had been declared free of Ebola in December, also has been confronting a new cluster of cases which emerged in February.

The WHO said in a separate statement on Friday that Guinean health authorities had been using an experimental vaccine in an effort to contain that flare-up, injecting nearly 800 people who have come into contact with the eight known patients, all of whom live in two southern prefectures.

Ebola sickened more than 28,000 people and killed more than 11,300 after a

n outbreak in Guinea in December of 2013 that spread rapidly to Liberia and Sierra Leone, creating global alarm about the virus and its ease of transmission through physical contact. An outpouring of international resources was mobilised to help fight it. The WHO warned small flare-ups of Ebola were likely in the coming months because of its persistence in some survivors.

The new case in Liberia represents the third flare-up there since the initial outbreak there was declared over in May.