Nigeria ends 21-day Ebola contact monitoring with no secondary transmission

Nigeria has completed monitoring all 62 people who had contact with its first Ebola patient in more than a decade, with none developing the disease. The result is a reassuring sign that no secondary transmission was detected, but it does not mean the outbreak has officially ended.

The patient, a Swiss woman who had travelled to Uganda, recovered in Switzerland after being evacuated with her husband. Thirteen contacts reported symptoms but tested negative, as did seven other Ebola alerts investigated in five Nigerian states. Under World Health Organization protocols, Nigeria must wait 42 days from the last patient’s recovery or departure before declaring the outbreak over; the wider outbreak has also affected the Democratic Republic of the Congo and several other countries.