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Nigeria Ebola Case: All Contacts Clear
14 Nov
Summary
- All 62 contacts monitored after Nigeria's Ebola case remained disease-free.
- A Swiss woman, Nigeria's sole Ebola case, recovered and was discharged.
- Nigeria completed 21-day monitoring, awaiting official outbreak end declaration.
Nigerian health authorities have concluded the 21-day monitoring of 62 contacts associated with the country's first Ebola case in over a decade. The individual identified with the virus was a Swiss woman who traveled from Uganda before returning to Nigeria. She and her husband were subsequently evacuated to Switzerland, where she has fully recovered and been discharged.
During the monitoring period, none of the 62 contacts developed Ebola. Thirteen contacts reported symptoms such as fever, but all tested negative for the virus. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) stated that the completion of contact monitoring does not automatically signify the end of the outbreak.
According to World Health Organization (WHO) protocols, a nation must observe a 42-day period from the recovery or departure of the last confirmed patient before an official end-of-outbreak declaration can be made. Ebola is highly contagious, spreading through direct contact with bodily fluids or contaminated items.
This particular Ebola outbreak began in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in May and has since spread to multiple provinces within the DRC, as well as Uganda, France, Kenya, and Nigeria. The NCDC investigated seven other Ebola alerts across five Nigerian states recently, all of which tested negative. The outbreak in the DRC is notably one of the largest on record, with significant numbers of infections and fatalities.
