Lab results confirm a new case of Ebola virus disease in Liberia — a 30-year-old woman who died yesterday afternoon while being transferred to a hospital in the capital Monrovia.

Produced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under a very-high magnification, this digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a single filamentous Ebola virus particle that had budded from the surface of a VERO cell of the African green monkey kidney epithelial cell line.
Produced by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under a very-high magnification, this digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a single filamentous Ebola virus particle that had budded from the surface of a VERO cell of the African green monkey kidney epithelial cell line.

Liberia’s Ministry of Health, WHO and partner agencies immediately sent a team to the community outside Monrovia where the woman lived and the clinic where she was being treated to begin case investigation and identification of individuals who may have been in contact with her.

Liberian health authorities convened an emergency meeting early this morning with key partners to coordinate and plan a rapid response.

This latest case marks Liberia’s third flare-up of Ebola virus disease since its original outbreak was declared over on 9 May 2015. The last flare-up in the country began in November 2015 and ended 14 January 2016. Neighboring Guinea is also responding to a new cluster of Ebola cases in its southern prefecture of Nzérékoré.

WHO reiterated that additional flare-ups of the disease are expected in the months to come, largely due to virus persistence in some survivors, and that the three countries must remain on high alert and ready to respond.

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