In a gut-wrenching, but not wholly unexpected event, a new case of Ebola virus disease (EVD) has popped up in a town called Nedowein (or Nedowian [8]), about 50km south west of Liberia's capital, Monrovia.
Liberia had been declared a country free of EVD on 9-May-2015 - 52 days ago, or 1 month, 21-days, or 1248 hours.
The 17 year old male (17M) died on Wednesday (about 6 days ago) and has already been buried by all accounts. Samples from his corpse tested positive at least twice.[3]
It's not an unexpected event because both Guinea and Sierra Leone, adjoining countries, continue to struggle with EVD and have been unable to stop the disease from spreading, even though in relatively small numbers compared to what was occurring in 2014. What makes this new case in Liberia a little mysterious is that 17M died far from the border with either of these countries; approximately 150km from Sierra Leone's south-eastern border and about 200km from the nearest Guinean border. Sure, these are not insurmountable distances to travel while incubating an Ebola virus infection, but it would have been a simpler call that this was an imported case if it had occurred on or nearer to the border of one of the two countries with ongoing disease. However, it seems the young man did not travel outside Liberia.[8]
Hopefully the contact tracing and investigations that are going on now will find that 17M simply made contact with someone who had traveled from outside of Liberia, perhaps to Nedowein, which is described as the home town of 17M.[2,7] If this is not an imported case then one is left to wonder about various other scenarios including:
- sexual or other less common transmission of Ebola virus from an as yet undiscovered convalescent EVD case
- contact with an unknown case who had traveled across the border from a country with EVD
- a new zoonotic acquisition of a different Ebola virus variant
- there may still be clusters of EVD within Liberia that have been smouldering on without the knowledge of any authorities
Time and further hard work will no doubt tell.
UPDATE: A second case, associated with 17M ("Abraham") has been diagnosed.[9] Some discussion is evolving around the consumption of dog meat by 17M,[11] however, the same questions around how a dog would become infected (no record of the detection of active replication in a dog have been recorded to date, although antibodies have suggested the possibility in earlier outbreaks) will apply.
Further reading...
- http://www.frontpageafricaonline.com/index.php/news/5660-ebola-back-in-liberia-1-month-20-days-after-free-declaration
- http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33323664
- http://www.ibtimes.com/ebola-liberia-corpse-tests-positive-deadly-virus-weeks-after-liberia-declared-ebola-1989248
- http://bigstory.ap.org/article/581e523aeb1144f68aa1a1629b0e9252/liberian-official-says-corpse-tests-positive-ebola
- http://news.yahoo.com/liberia-announces-return-ebola-one-death-094057018.html
- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/world/africa/liberia-new-ebola-death-is-reported.html
- http://newsworldmap.com/ebola-returns-to-liberia-but-health-minister-tells-public-no-need-to-panic-washington-post/
- http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2015/06/liberias-puzzle-how-did-new-ebola-patient-become-infected
- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/01/world/africa/liberia-ebola-epidemic.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimesscience&_r=0
- http://frontpageafricaonline.com/index.php/health-sci/5667-ebola-mystery-dog-meat-story-eclipses-border-lapse-theory
- New links added; town name variation added from Science report; hypothesis of contact with another imported case - #2; note on lack of travel outside of Liberia; announcmene tof a 2nd case
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