KAKATA, Margibi – Administrators in Margibi County have denied reports from the Liberian News Agency (LINA) stating that there are four new cases of Ebola.

Festus Tarah, Margibi County’s information officer, informed the Bush Chicken that the Liberian News Agency (LINA) report is misleading and dishonest. “The county has not recorded any new cases of Ebola since February of this year when a man was transported to the county for treatment,” Tarpah continued. Since the man’s death, contact tracing and surveillance have been carried out.

Tarpah also clarified that Margibi County residents have not contracted Ebola since November 2014. He says that the Ebola patients reported as residents of Margibi County are in fact from Montserrado County. Margibi and neighboring Montserrado have combined efforts to stay updated on information sharing and to control the transportation of corpses and sick individuals. Tarpah indicated that “Monrovia is where all the new cases have been transported from” and his county was doing its best to curb future outbreaks from bodies brought into the counties.

In order to control the risk of the virus spreading, all efforts are being put into tracing patients’ contacts and monitoring their family members. With the recent case, the patient’s widow was treated at the Kakata Ebola Treatment unit and subsequently discharged.

Continued efforts also include quarantining villages where there are suspicions or information about inhabitants with the Ebola virus. Gaygbah and nearby villages were quarantined as officials treated the widow.

LINA reported on Tuesday that the community health services director, Joseph Kohene, disclosed at the weekly Kakata Ebola taskforce briefing that four new cases had been discovered. According to LINA, Kohene attributed the new cases to a woman who traveled with her sick husband from Monrovia to Kakata.

However, Mr. Kohene, has denied that he is aware of any new Ebola cases in the county. He told Bush Chicken that he had not briefed any gathering or journalist about the four new positive cases of the Ebola virus. He confirmed the widow’s discharged from the treatment unit but emphasized that the county has not recorded any new cases.

Featured image courtesy of USAID