JOHANNESBURG, Nov 1 (Reuters) – Health authorities in Nigeria investigating two suspected Ebola cases in the country’s northeast region confirmed that the samples tested negative after two rounds of testing, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on Sunday.
The two individuals had been isolated while officials carried out contact identification, listing and laboratory testing, authorities said in a post on X.
Nigeria confirmed its first Ebola case in more than a decade last week in a Swiss woman who had travelled to Uganda and then returned to the capital Abuja in central Nigeria. She and her husband were evacuated to Switzerland on Monday. It remains the only confirmed case of the disease in the country up to date.
The centre of Africa’s Ebola outbreak is in Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 5,000 people have died since it was declared in May. Kenya and Uganda have also reported cases.
There are no approved treatments or vaccines to combat the rare Bundibugyo species, which is behind the Congo outbreak.
(Reporting by Ananya Palyekar and Sathvi G Bhat in Bengaluru and Nellie Peyton in Johannesburg; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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