Liberia ebola-free

This item appears on page 61 of the July 2015 issue.

Liberia was declared free of ebola on May 9, forty-two days (two full incubation periods) after the last confirmed new case there. At the height of the ebola epidemic, Liberia was reporting 300 to 400 new cases every week.

However, with 43 new cases being reported in Guinea and 19 in Sierra Leone, the total number of new ebola cases rose slightly in May.

The number of confirmed cases of ebola since the viral outbreak began in March 2014 is 26,969, with 11,135 deaths, almost all of them in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.Â