Ebola Outbreak Again in Sierra Leone; 624 People Quarantined Following A Death

As many as 624 people were quarantined following the death of a Ebola infected man in Sierra Leone in the last week. The government officials announced last Thursday that they would quarantine the entire area of Northern Tonkolili District.

The man lived in Freetown, but had returned to Tonkolili to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The entire village, about 500 people, have been quarantined, including 30 nurses who had contact with the patient.

In addition to the 503 people in the village, 121 others who are believed to have come into contact with the patient outside of Tonkolili have been quarantined.

The government authorities were clear to describe this case as high-risk, particularly because the man’s father works as a taxi driver, and used his car to transport his son to two different hospitals. It is not known how many people came into contact with the father or took rides in his car in between his son’s diagnosis and transport.

The authorities note that this is particularly unwelcome news in Sierra Leone, as the World Health Organization had recently said that Ebola cases had dwindled to extremely promising levels. The week before the quarantines began, Sierra Leone documented only three cases; Guinea, the other country still fighting the Ebola outbreak, documented four.

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Source-Medindia