On Thursday, Dr. Diallo abruptly changed course and isolated the boy and his siblings. With the government’s blessing, they were taken to a fenced-in Ebola treatment center in the capital for monitoring.

After the first death here in September, aid workers bombarded the victim’s relatives with questions: Who cared for her? With whom did she share a meal, a bed, or a car?

So many questions had been asked that it was almost predictable who would test positive next: first the healer who treated her, then his assistant, then the healer’s wife and later the girl’s sister. The disease was spreading, but in anticipated fashion.

Then, out of nowhere, on Oct. 13, the corpse of a woman in a village down the road, who had not been identified as having been close to any of the new victims, tested positive for Ebola. No one had mentioned her to workers, let alone sought medical help from the troupe of top doctors camped out less than a mile away.

“Something escaped from the team,” said Dr. Diallo, whose tenure in Guinea stretches from the initial case in the outbreak. “We are not quite sure what happened.”

It was also unclear whether the heavy-handed approach wielded by the prime minister would be effective. Some aid workers were appalled at tactics like imprisonment and threats to force a respected village chief to step down.

Ms. Camara has been missing now for just over two weeks. At this point, considering the contact she had with someone with Ebola, health workers said she is most likely very sick, perhaps even dead. Or maybe she never contracted the virus, they said. Maybe she is one of the lucky ones.