A corpse has tested positive for Ebola in Sierra Leone, an official said Friday — just one day after the World Health Organization declared the outbreak over in West Africa.
According to the Associated Press, Francis Langoba Kelly, spokesman for Sierra Leone’s Office of National Security, told a local radio program that tests on a 22-year-old woman who died earlier this month were positive for the virus.
The WHO confirmed the new case, saying that its discovery reflects “the ongoing risk of new flare-ups of the virus in affected countries.”
“The Sierra Leone government acted rapidly to respond to this new case,” the U.N. health agency said. “Through the country’s new emergency operations center, a joint team of local authorities, WHO and partners are investigating the origin of the case, identifying contacts and initiating control measures to prevent further transmission.”
On Thursday, the WHO declared that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa — which left more than 11,300 dead — had officially ended.
The WHO made that declaration 42 days after Liberia’s last Ebola patient tested negative for the disease twice — the traditional marker of an epidemic’s conclusion. The two other worst-affected countries, Sierra Leone and Guinea, were declared Ebola-free last year.
In recent months, Liberia had been declared free of Ebola, but new cases were later discovered. Guinea, ground zero of the outbreak, was declared free of Ebola last month.
More cases of the deadly virus were reported in Sierra Leone than any other country during the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. Of the more than 14,000 cases in Sierra Leone, nearly 4,000 resulted in death, according to WHO statistics.
In total, more than 28,600 people worldwide were stricken with Ebola during the outbreak, according to the WHO. More than 11,300 of them died.
As the new case emerged in Sierra Leone, government officials appealed to the public in northern Sierra Leone to remain calm.
Authorities are tracing the woman’s contacts and have dispatched teams to the area for investigations, the AP reported. Quarantines are likely.
