Sierra Leoneans on Sunday celebrated the end of a three-day lockdown aimed at stemming the world’s worst ever Ebola epidemic, as authorities claimed the controversial operation had identified dozens of new infections and located scores of bodies.
In the most extreme strategy employed by a nation since the epidemic began, Sierra Leone ordered its 6 million residents to stay indoors as volunteers circulated to educate households as well as isolate the sick and remove the dead.
In the early evening, even before the lockdown officially ended at midnight, residents in some parts of the capital, Freetown, emerged onto the streets to sing and dance. Police in the western part of the city said they had made a number of arrests in an attempt to enforce the measure in its final hours.
Photo: EPA
Earlier in the day, Stephen Gaojia, head of the Emergency Operations Center that leads the national Ebola response, said a few areas had still not been reached by the government’s teams
“Even though the exercise has been a huge success so far, it has not been concluded in some metropolitan cities like Freetown and Kenema,” he said.
Gaojia said 92 bodies had been recovered across the country by the end of Saturday, the second day of the lockdown.
A total of 123 people had contacted authorities during the drive, believing they might be infected. Of these, 56 tested positive for Ebola, 31 tested negative and 36 were still awaiting their results, he said.
The center announced in the evening that it would not extend the campaign in order to reach the remaining households as it had earlier said might be required.
“It cannot be extended because its objectives have largely been met,” Gaojia said.
Ebola has infected at least 5,357 people in West Africa since March, mainly in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, killing 2,630 of those, the WHO said. At least 562 have died in Sierra Leone.
The outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever is the worst since it was identified in 1976 in the forests of central Africa.
The lockdown was intended to allow 30,000 health workers, volunteers and teachers to visit every household in the country.
Some criticized the measure before it began on Friday as a rush to stock up on provisions caused a spike in prices, leaving many of Sierra Leone’s poor unable to buy food.
The medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres has also warned that the lockdown could lead people to conceal cases.
Residents have largely complied with the plan, and the streets of the capital have remained mostly deserted, except for ambulances and police vehicles.
However, a team burying Ebola victims was attacked in Freetown on Saturday, as a small group defied the lockdown.
Liberia, meanwhile, opened a new 150-bed Ebola treatment center in the capital, Monrovia, on Sunday. The country is the worst hit by the epidemic, which was first identified in neighbouring Guinea in March.
The crisis has swamped the already struggling health sectors of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. In Monrovia, a lack of beds in treatment centers has forced health workers to turn away infected patients, raising the risk of the disease’s further spread.
About 50 patients were immediately transferred to the facility at the city’s Island Clinic from another overflowing hospital, and the government has plans to build 17 new centers across the country.
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS