Liberia is coming close to eliminating the Ebola epidemic, with only five reported cases in the country left. Yahoo/AFP. Three cases were in the capital of Monrovia while the other two are in the northwest of the country. The World Health Organization has not confirmed these numbers. In Guiana and Sierra Leone there are still new cases, though in the past week both have seen fewer cases. Despite the good news the WHO warns that the outbreak has not been broken. If the outbreak survives to the rainy season in spring, the international response to the virus could be greatly hampered. In more good news, a new Ebola vaccine has started to arrive in Liberia.
My Comment:
I'm cautiously optimistic that I won't have to write about Ebola for too much longer. The disease is not gone yet of course, but the tide seems to be turning. I have no idea if Liberia's numbers are legit, but there has been a huge drop off on the figures I have been seeing in Liberia. Sierra Leone and Guiana are a different story, but the rates in those two countries, at the very least, are not getting worse, and if anything are slowing slightly. The news that a vaccine is being used is good as well, if it ends up working. We might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for this outbreak, which is good news for the world.
Of course, all of this could be wrong. Sierra Leone is still seeing more then 100 cases a week. And that's just the confirmed ones. Guiana isn't nearly as bad but it is still seeing 10 to 20 cases a week and that is not good. Even if the disease gets eliminated in Liberia, it could still come back if the disease isn't checked in Guiana and Sierra Leone. The fact that Libera and Sierra Leone are scaling back on their restrictions before the outbreak is completely under control is somewhat concerning as well. In Liberia, it isn't a huge risk but Sierra Leone lifting their quarantine is probably a bad idea.
All that being said, it looks like, at the very least, that the disease is unlikely to spread to any other countries. It may take as long as the rest of the year to completely eliminate Ebola in these countries but we shouldn't see exponential growth anytime soon. The temptation in the future may be to downplay this outbreak since a global epidemic did not occur. But we got lucky. We made huge mistakes by not mobilizing against this disease much sooner then we did. And America barely missed a larger outbreak due to dumb luck instead of competence. It's something to think about when the next big virus hits...
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