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

Nigerian health authorities say they have completed a 21-day monitoring period for the 62 contacts of a person who contracted the Ebola virus, ⁠⁠with none of them falling ill. 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.

The patient and her husband were evacuated to Switzerland where she recovered fully and has been discharged from hospital. The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) said on Friday that none of the 62 contacts identified after the first case have developed the disease, with the ⁠⁠last contact just discharged.

Thirteen ⁠⁠contacts reported fever or other non-specific symptoms during monitoring, but all of them tested negative for the virus, the NCDC said. According to World Health Organization (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.