UN: At least 50 Ebola hotspots remain, but new cases falling

At least 50 Ebola hotspots remain in the three hardest-hit West African countries but new cases are declining and the deadly disease will be defeated, the U.N.’s Ebola chief said Thursday. The latest report from the World Health Organization showing reductions in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone “is very good news,” Dr. David Nabarro said in an interview with The Associated Press. In the week ending Jan. 11, WHO said Guinea reported its lowest weekly total of new Ebola cases since mid-August. Liberia had its lowest total since the first week of June and no confirmed new cases for the final two days of the week. And new cases in Sierra Leone declined for a second week to the lowest level since the end of August.

There are still numbers of new cases that are alarming, and there are hotspots that are emerging in new places that make me believe there is still quite a lot of the disease that we’re not seeing.

United Nations chief Dr. David Nabarro

But Nabarro cautioned that there are “at least 50 micro-outbreaks” underway, and the chains of transmission of the virus “have still got to be understood.” The Ebola outbreak has been the worst in world history. According to the latest WHO report released Wednesday, there have been more than 21,000 cases and 8,300 deaths. The death toll in Liberia as of Sunday was 3,538, followed by Sierra Leone with 3,062 deaths and Guinea with 1,814. The key, Nabarro said, is getting local communities to change their traditional healing rituals and funeral and burial practices which involve a lot of contact with body fluids that spread Ebola. In some cases, evidence suggests that as many as 50 people have become infected at a single funeral, he said.

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