Following the death of a 16-year-old girl, Sierra Leone’s health authorities decided to quarantine 700 people, including the girl’s parents, friends and classmates.
“Among those in confinement are the parents of the young girl who died, her relatives and her classmates. They are classified as “presenting a high risk” although they have shown no signs or symptoms of the disease, “said spokesman for the Ministry of Health, Seray Turay. “More than 680 inhabitants of the village of Robureh are now under quarantine for 21 days,” spokesman for the local Ebola response center, Amadu Thullah, told AFP.
This new case is added to the source of contamination located in the neighboring province of Kambia.
According to the National Center for the Fight against Ebola (NERC), 1,524 people have been quarantined in the two provinces.
Ebola: the criteria for suspicion
A suspect patient is defined as any person presenting, within twenty-one days after returning from the risk area, a fever measured by a caregiver greater than or equal to 38 ° C, according to the Institute for Public Health Surveillance.
During incubation, between two and twenty-one days, the person is not or only slightly contagious. The risk of transmission increases with worsening disease and symptoms. The disease is fatal in half of the cases, also explains the Institute.
The Ebola epidemic which has affected West Africa since December 2013 is the most serious since the identification of the Ebola virus in 1976. In total, it has killed at least 11,279 people for 27,748 people affected, a assessment which could even be underestimated according to the WHO. More than 99% of the victims are concentrated in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
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