The number of new confirmed Ebola cases totaled 99 in the week to Jan. 25, the lowest tally since June last year, the WHO said yesterday, signaling the tide might have turned against the epidemic.
“The response to the EVD [Ebola virus disease] epidemic has now moved to a second phase, as the focus shifts from slowing transmission to ending the epidemic,” the WHO said.
“To achieve this goal as quickly as possible, efforts have moved from rapidly building infrastructure to ensuring that capacity for case finding, case management, safe burials, and community engagement is used as effectively as possible,” it said.
FATALITIES
The outbreak has killed 8,810 people out of 22,092 cases, almost all of them in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
Cases and deaths have fallen rapidly in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the past few weeks, with 20 deaths recorded in Liberia in the 21 days to Jan. 25 — less than one a day.
However, Guinea reported 30 confirmed cases in the latest week, up from 20 in the previous week.
The epidemic is also still spreading geographically there, with a first confirmed case in Guinea’s Mali prefecture bordering Senegal, which reopened its border with Guinea on Monday.
A resurgence of the virus in Guinea, where the outbreak began, would threaten President Alpha Conde’s goal of eradicating Ebola from the country by early March.
RESISTANCE
Disease experts say that tracking down everyone who has had close contact with an Ebola patient is crucial to ending the outbreak.
However, in dozens of remote villages in Guinea, angry residents are blocking access for health workers.
The most intense transmission in Guinea is in Forecariah District, close to the border with western Sierra Leone, the worst Ebola hotspot.
“There have recently been reports of high levels of community resistance to EVD response measures in Forecariah, indicating a need to better engage the community in the response,” the WHO said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
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Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
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