MONROVIA (Reuters) – Liberia has reported its first Ebola case in weeks on Friday, health officials said, in a setback for its efforts to stamp out the worst recorded epidemic of the deadly virus.
A government official, who asked not to be named, said the patient came from Caldwell, a suburb of the capital not far from the last cluster of cases in the St Paul’s Bridge neighborhood.
The outbreak has killed more than 10,200 people, mostly in Liberia, neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone, which are all still battling the disease.
“Today, a patient tested positive of Ebola at the transit center run by Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Liberia’s Ministry of Health’s Redemption Hospital,” said Adolphus Mawolo, spokesman for MSF in Monrovia.
The government had hoped to declare the country Ebola-free next month, 42 days after the second negative test of the last patient. This represents double the length of the virus’ incubation period.
Liberia, which detected its first case of Ebola nearly a year ago, had previously gone for 16 days without any new infections, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The government put the figure at 27 days without cases.
It released its last known patient on 5 March.
Monrovia emerged as the worst hotspot of the epidemic in the middle of last year but since hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and the deployment of U.S. troops helped officials to beat back the virus.
(Reporting by James Harding Giahyue; Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Daniel Flynn)