Ebola returns to Liberia... Yahoo/AFP

Beatrice Yordoldo was the last Ebola patient in Liberia until the new case. Yahoo/AFP.

More then a month after the last Ebola case in Liberia, the disease has returned. Yahoo/AFP. A new patient has been found 27 days after the last case of Ebola in the country was released from the hospital. Liberia has not had any new cases of Liberia since February 20th. It is very unclear how the patient had come into contact with the disease because everyone in Liberia who had been known to be exposed to the virus had passed the 21 day observation period. Liberia was to be officially declared Ebola free by April 15th, if the new case had not come. 

My Comment:

Much of the other news in the report I covered the other day so I won't repeat myself here about Sierra Leone and Guinea. But this is horrible news for Liberia. They were so close to having beaten the disease. They were only a couple of weeks from being declared Ebola free and to have this happen now is devastating. Especially considering how hard Liberia had been hit by Ebola. Liberia had been the great success story but now nothing is certain. 

My big concern is how on earth did this person contract Ebola? Did she travel to Sierra Leone or Guinea? Did she come into contact with someone from those countries or someone else who had contact with people from those countries? Are there still Ebola infections in Liberia that somehow slipped under the radar? Or did she have some contact with contaminated medial waste that was somehow still infectious? All of these are possible. But my biggest concern is that there is now a new natural host for the disease. If some native animal was able to act as a host and has contact with the disease it is possible that this woman caught it that way. If so that is very bad news because it means Ebola will be very hard to eliminate fully. 

Still, this is only one case. If she didn't expose anyone and they are able to figure out where she caught the virus they should be able to contact trace and isolate anyone who was exposed. This is a lot more like the situation in Mali or the United States then the situation in Liberia even a few months ago. Tracking one case is not nearly as difficult as tracking hundreds. With any luck at all this new infection will be the only one.