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Rate of new Ebola infections in Liberia is slowing, WHO says

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OVERVIEW OF DEVELOPMENTS DURING PAST DAY

WASHINGTON POST                            Oct. 30, 2014
By Lena H. Sun, Brady Dennis and Joel Achenbach
New Ebola infections in virus-ravaged Liberia appear to be declining for the first time in months, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

Until now, officials have been suspicious of this encouraging trend, thinking it might be an artifact of poor data collection, a symptom of chaos in countries that were overwhelmed by the crisis. But Bruce Aylward, a top WHO official, said Wednesday that the decline in new cases “is real,” measured by scores of empty beds in Ebola clinics, fewer cases confirmed by laboratory tests and a drop in burials by specially trained teams.

Still, the WHO and other officials remain wary because the nature of this outbreak has been one of unpredictable surges and declines.

“It’s like saying your pet tiger is under control,” Aylward said. “This is a very, very dangerous disease.”

Meanwhile President Obama continued to criticize the calls for mandatory quarantines for returning volunteers

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/rate-of-new-ebola-infections-in-west-africa-is-slowing-who-says/2014/10/29/74e70a86-5fa0-11e4-9f3a-7e28799e0549_story.html

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...health authorities are warning that it is too early to celebrate.

It is important to remember that this happened once before, on a smaller scale. In March, after alarming reports from Guinea that a rural outbreak had reached the capital, the W.H.O. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent experts in to help. The epidemic spread to Sierra Leone, and then to Liberia. But cases grew only slowly, and by May, most of the experts were withdrawn. At the time, there was more worry about MERS in Saudi Arabia.

In early August, the chief scientist for Britain’s foreign aid agency said the “end of the epidemic was in sight.” He was wrong. About 800 people were known to be dead then. Cases had actually begun to explode in July, and now about 5,000 are dead.

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http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/ask-well-is-the-ebola-epidemic-ending-in-africa/

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