Chief medical officer rules out return of Ebola after deaths of 11 people linked to attendance at funeral of religious leader, but no clear answer has been found

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Eleven people have died and five are in hospital in Liberia after contracting a mystery illness the World Health Organisation (WHO) said was linked to their attendance at the funeral of a religious leader, officials have said.

“We are still investigating. The only thing we have ruled out is ... Ebola,” said Liberia’s chief medical officer, Francis Kateh, adding that samples from the victims had been sent abroad for further testing.

On Wednesday, WHO said Liberian health authorities were taking rapid precautionary steps after eight people died of a mystery illness, 10 months after the end of a two-year Ebola virus outbreak.

Thankless, dangerous – the task of the Ebola burial boys in Sierra Leone Read more

“It seems all of these people were attending the funeral of a religious leader,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a briefing in Geneva. Many Ebola victims contracted the disease after coming into contact with corpses of other victims.

“They have taken samples from the dead bodies and all the samples came back negative for Ebola. They will be looking of course for other haemorrhagic fevers and for bacteria, if there was any common exposure to water contamination or food contamination,” she said.

Five people remain under observation in hospital in Sinoe county, a four-hour drive south-east of the capital, Monrovia, and four have been discharged, Kateh said. Their symptoms included fever, vomiting and diarrhoea, said Chaib.

Hospital staff are wearing protective equipment and people who have come into contact with the sick are being traced in the community to see if they have fallen ill, she added.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Francis Kateh, Liberia’s chief medical officer, addresses journalists during a press conference in Monrovia on Wednesday. Photograph: Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA

“WHO, CDC (US Centers for Disease Control) and other partners are providing technical and logistical support to the rapid response team that has been activated at district and county levels,” Chaib said.

In June last year, WHO declared Liberia free of active Ebola virus transmission, the last of three West African countries at the epicentre of the world’s worst outbreak of the disease. The epidemic killed more than 11,300 people and infected 28,600 from 2013 as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, according to WHO data.

A WHO advisory group of vaccine experts was due later on Friday to issue their findings after a three-day regular meeting on vaccines. The statement would include an update on “efficacy, safety and timelines for licensing Ebola vaccines”, Chaib said.

