Now that it has been more than 42 days since the Spanish health care worker infected while caring for a patient with Ebola Virus Disease in Madrid tested negative twice and was discharged from hospital, the World Health Organization (WHO) has now declared the outbreak in Spain to be over.

This digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a number of filamentous Ebola virus particles (red) that had budded from the surface of a VERO cell (blue-gray) of the African green monkey kidney epithelial cell line./NIAID
This digitally-colorized scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicts a number of filamentous Ebola virus particles (red) that had budded from the surface of a VERO cell (blue-gray) of the African green monkey kidney epithelial cell line./NIAID

Spain now joins Nigeria and Senegal in having its Ebola outbreak declared over.

In West Africa, where there has been intense transmission of EVD, a total of 17,111 confirmed, probable, and suspected cases of EVD and 6,055 deaths have been reported up to the end of 30 November 2014 by the Ministries of Health of Guinea and Sierra Leone, and 28 November by the Ministry of Health of Liberia.

Case incidence is slightly increasing in Guinea and stable or declining in Liberia.

EVD transmission remains intense in Sierra Leone, with 537 new confirmed cases reported in the week to 30 November (more than Guinea and Liberia combined), compared with 385 cases the previous week. Freetown continues to be severely affected recording more than 200 cases.