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By Camillus Eboh
ABUJA, Nov 13 (Reuters) – Nigeria has completed the 21-day monitoring period for all 62 contacts linked to the country’s reported Ebola case with none of them falling ill, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said on Friday.
Nigeria confirmed its first Ebola case in more than a decade on October 20 in a Swiss woman who had travelled to Uganda and then returned to Nigeria. She and her husband were evacuated to Switzerland where she recovered fully and has been discharged from hospital.
• The NCDC said none of the 62 contacts identified after the imported case developed the disease, and the last contact was discharged today
• Thirteen contacts reported fever or other non-specific symptoms during monitoring, but all 13 tested negative for the virus
• The NCDC said seven Ebola alerts across five Nigerian states over the past three weeks were investigated, and all seven tested negative
• The agency said that completing contact monitoring does not by itself mean the outbreak is over
• According to WHO protocols, a country must complete a full 42-day countdown from the recovery or departure of the last confirmed patient before an official end-of-outbreak declaration can be made
(Reporting by Camillus Eboh. Writing by Elisha Bala-Gbogbo; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
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