10 New Ebola Cases Discovered During Sierra Leone’s Lockdown

Ten new cases of Ebola infections were discovered during Sierra Leone’s nationwide three-day lockdown, but officials claim that the West African nation has reached the “tail end” of the epidemic.

Alfred Palo Conteh, head of the country’s Ebola response, said today that during last weekend’s lockdown hundreds of sick people were identified during the door-to-door operation which was also aimed at reminding people how to prevent Ebola and to prevent complacency.

A source who declined to be identified said there were 961 death alerts nationwide during the lockdown’s first two days and 495 reports of illness of which 235 were suspected Ebola infections.

After laboratory tests have been carried out on the collected blood samples, the results reported this morning of only 10 cases who tested positive for the Ebola virus.

The fact that there weren’t that many cases after this effort, I think that’s a great sign,”

said Dr. Dan Jernigan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More than 10,300 people have died in West Africa over the last year from the worst detected outbreak of Ebola, which has plagued Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.

A total of 82 new confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease (EVD) were reported in the week to 29 March, a slight increase compared with 79 cases the previous week. Case incidence in Guinea increased to 57, compared with 45 the previous week. This offset a fourth consecutive weekly fall in case incidence in Sierra Leone, which reported 25 confirmed cases. Liberia reported no confirmed cases over the same period, as reported by the World Health Organization.