MONROVIA, Montserrado – Liberia’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Francis Kateh, has announced that the two remaining patients at the ELWA 3 Ebola Treatment Unit will shortly be discharged and declared free of the deadly virus.

“The father and brother of the 15-year old Ebola victim were tested negative twice of the virus,” Kateh said.

He mentioned that the father of the deceased insisted on leaving the ETU without any media coverage. “He wants to quietly go home,” Kateh said.

But Kateh added that health authorities are trying to convince the father of the benefit to the public if he comes out of the ETU and tells his story.

He said it will be tough for health authorities to inform the world that Liberia has contained another outbreak of Ebola without the survivors telling their story.

“We have sent social workers to the ETU to convince both the father and the victim’s brother to speak to the media,” he said.

In another development, Kateh addressed reports from residents of a potential new Ebola case. Multiple residents in the Soul Clinic community in Monrovia’s Paynesville suburb confirmed a resident’s death to The Bush Chicken over the Nov. 29 holiday weekend. They noted that an Ebola burial team had removed the body.

Kateh explained that as a general precaution, citizens are asked to call Ebola burial teams whenever there are deaths. He said samples collected from the dead tested negative for the virus.

“The recent death in the Soul Clinic community was never linked to the Ebola virus disease,” Kateh said.

Featured photo by UNMEER/Simon Ruf