At least 2,630 people have died in the worst outbreak of Ebola virus in history, which has so far infected at least 5,357 people in West Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said yesterday.
In an update on the epidemic, which is raging through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and has spread into Nigeria and Senegal, the WHO said there were no signs yet of it slowing.
“The upward epidemic trend continues in the three countries that have widespread and intense transmission – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone,” the United Nations health agency said.
There are no signs of the deadly epidemic slowing down
Those three countries account for the vast majority of cases and deaths in the outbreak – eight others have died in Nigeria, out of 21 cases, and one case has been confirmed in Senegal.
The WHO said a surge in Ebola in Liberia is being driven primarily by a continued increase in the number of cases reported in the capital, Monrovia, where 1,210 bed spaces were needed, five times the current capacity.
The WHO has said it hopes to be able to “bend the curve” in the almost exponential increase in cases within three months.
The latest data updated five days of data for Liberia and one day for the other countries, and showed no new deaths in Sierra Leone since the previous update.
The WHO said efforts to integrate various sources of data in Liberia would lead to many cases being reclassified and about 100 previously unreported cases had been found and would be included in later updates.
In a separate Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 40 deaths had been reported out of 71 cases by September 15, the WHO said.
Meanwhile for the next three days, starting at midnight yesterday, Sierra Leone is on a nationwide lockdown aimed at helping the fight against the current outbreak of Ebola which is ravaging the country and the region. Sierra Leone’s government says extreme measures are needed to try to contain the world’s worst outbreak of Ebola on record but many fear it will bring more hardship to a nation that is already one of the poorest on earth.
Initially a plan to locate the ill, Sierra Leone’s lockdown will now seek to make people aware of the risks of Ebola and what to do if a family member falls sick, the government says.
As about 30,000 volunteers train for their dawn-to-dusk information campaign, residents flocked to high-end supermarkets and, between downpours, street stalls to buy food and medicine.
Queues formed along streets as people stocked up on fuel. Banks, already operating at reduced hours to limit infections, overflowed as clients withdrew cash.
Some say a few days hardship is a price worth paying if it contributes to halting the march of Ebola across a nation only a decade into its recovery from an 11-year civil war that killed 50,000 people.
“It’s better to stay at home for three days, even 21 days, than to lose thousands of people in a single day,” said Freetown resident Mahawa Allieu.
This Ebola outbreak was initially confirmed in March in Guinea’s remote southeastern forest. From there, it spread, slowly at first, across the country and into Liberia and Sierra Leone.