While last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the end of the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa, new cases are suspected in Sierra Leone. Friday January 15, 2016, WHO confirms death of 22-year-old woman, Mariatu Jalloh, following this hemorrhagic fever in Sierra Leone, on the border with Guinea. Since then, 109 people who could have been also infected with the virus have been placed in quarantine. 28 of them present a high risk of contamination.
Risk of resurgence
Since December 2013, more than two years, the epidemic of hemorrhagic fever has raged mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The WHO lists 11,315 deaths for 28,637 recorded cases, affecting 99% this region of the globe. No case of hemorrhagic fever had been observed in Sierra Leone since November 7, 2015. To declare the end of an epidemic, the WHO relies on the incubation time of the virus, which is 21 days. Doctors have established that the risk of transmission is zero when more than two incubation periods, or 42 days, have passed and the blood tests of those treated show that the virus has disappeared from their bodies. Because if the treatments have not succeeded in completely dislodging the virus, which can for example stay active nine months in semen, the latter can reactivate in survivors who appear to be in good health. From risks of resurgence disease therefore persist, causing outbreaks of residual infections.
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