Sierra Leone patient tests positive for Ebola

A body has tested positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone.

This comes just hours after the World Health Organization (WHO) said transmission of the virus in West Africa had ended.

Two swab tests carried out on the deceased person by British health organization Public Health England came back positive in the north of the country.

The country had been declared free of the virus on November 7th 2015.

On Thursday, another West African country Liberia was declared free of the Ebola virus by global health experts on  a milestone that signalled an end to an epidemic in West Africa that has killed more than 11,300 people.

But the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned there could still be flare-ups of the disease in the region, which has suffered the world’s deadliest outbreak over the past two years, as survivors can carry the virus for months and could pass it on.

In an almost immediate sign of the potential risks, Sierra Leone’s health ministry reported a suspected Ebola death in the Tonkolili district east of the capital Freetown.

“The Ministry of Health and Sanitation has dispatched a team supported by international partners to investigate the suspected death and its circumstances,” it said in a note sent to health officials seen by Reuters.

The message did not specify if the body of the deceased had already been tested for the virus and health officials were not immediately available for further comment. The symptoms of Ebola resemble those of other diseases such as malaria.

Liberia was the last affected country to get the all-clear, with no cases of Ebola for 42 days, twice the length of the virus’s “incubation period” – the time elapsed between transmission of the disease and the appearance of symptoms.

“All known chains of transmission have been stopped in West Africa,” the WHO, a U.N. agency, said on Thursday.

The other affected countries, Guinea and Sierra Leone, were declared Ebola-free late last year. There were cases in seven other countries including Nigeria, the United States and Spain, but almost all the deaths were in the West African nations.

“It is the first time since the start of the … epidemic in West Africa two years ago that the three hardest-hit countries had zero cases for at least 42 days,” said WHO’s Liberia representative Alex Gasasira.

The WHO announcement on Thursday is a major step in the fight against a disease that began in the forests of eastern Guinea in December 2013 before spreading to Liberia and Sierra Leone. It overwhelmed medical infrastructure in the region which was ill-equipped to deal with the outbreak, and at its height in late 2014 sparked global fears among the general public.

The agency urged caution, however, because Liberia had previously twice been declared virus-free, in May and September of 2015, but each time a fresh cluster of cases unexpectedly emerged.

Its capital Monrovia was badly hit during the worst of the epidemic. Inadequate care meant patients lay strewn on the streets or pavements waiting hours for tests and treatment; medical holding pens became growth centres for the disease.

With those memories still fresh, and society and the economy still reeling from the outbreak, the reaction to Thursday’s announcement was muted. There was no signs of celebration such as the “Ebola free” T-shirts that people wore after previous WHO announcements.

“After the first declaration, people were dancing in the street,” said Vivian Lymas Tegli, child protection officer for UNICEF in Monrovia. “But I don’t think there will be any celebrations today. People are tired of Ebola. They feel it is here to stay.”