No new Ebola cases in Liberia for more than two weeks – WHO

No new case of the deadly Ebola virus has been registered in Liberia since February 19, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, also hailing positive signs in Sierra Leone and Guinea.

Liberia, long the hardest-hit country in the Ebola epidemic that has killed nearly 10,000 people in west Africa, “has now gone well over two weeks without a new reported case,” said Bruce Aylward, who heads WHO’s Ebola response.



Since the outbreak began in December, 2013, 24,282 people in nine countries have been infected with the virus, and 9,976 of them have died, according to the latest figures.

But the tide seems to have turned in Liberia, which six months ago was reporting more than 300 new cases each week and which still counts the most deaths in the outbreak, at 4,162.

The country last week discharged its last confirmed Ebola patient, who tested negative for the virus for the second time on March 3, Aylward told reporters in Geneva.

That means the country started its 42-day, or two incubation-period, countdown towards being considered Ebola free on March 4.