New Ebola Case Confirmed In Liberia: WHO

Several months after Liberia thought that it had bid ebola goodbye, the virus rears its head again. First, a 30-year-old patient died of ebola, and then her five-year-old son was tested as being affliced with the illness, reported the World Health Organization (WHO) Sunday.

This confirmation occurred three months after Liberia was said to be free from Ebola transmissions. This is twice the length of its incubation period, though the virus did not spread to another case.

The patient was transported to a hospital in Monrovia on Thursday after she contracted the virus. WHO and Liberia's health ministry confirmed that she died before she even came to the hospital.

As the woman's blood samples seemed to show positive tests for Ebola, officials are trying to detect how it got spread.

Tolbert Nyenswah, the head of Liberia's Ebola response, said that the new case has "given the tenacity of the Ebola virus."

Ebola is contagious, and can be transmitted through direct contact with patients or corpses, or their bodily fluids. The most common way of transmitting it in Liberia seemed to be through traditional funerals, in which mourners touched the corpses. With high fever and fatigue, the virus can lead to severe hemorrhaging too over time.

There have been more than 1,300 deaths in the last couple of years, striking Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone.

Though it is not a global health emergency anymore, sporadic flare-ups still happen.

WHO noted that the Liberia case was the third Ebola flare-up since the original outbreak in May of last year. The most recent flare-up started in November and finished in January.

The area has been put under special caution and red alert. There are 1,000 experienced staff members in the area, who will be asked to improve the health systems as well as emergency response operations.