Monrovia (AFP) - A Liberian woman who last week became the country's first Ebola patient in more than a month has died, a senior official said Saturday, adding that two new suspected cases had been identified.
The woman, who was diagnosed with Ebola on March 20, is the wife of a cured patient. The case was a setback to hopes that Liberia, once the worst-hit country, would be free of the epidemic soon.
"The last Ebola case died yesterday. She did not make it," Francis Karteh, the head of Ebola Incident Management Team in Liberia told AFP.
"Beside that, we have no confirmed case now in the country. Only two suspected cases for now. We are surveying 80 persons who were in the vicinity of the lady who died," he said.
Liberia has recorded more than 4,300 Ebola deaths but was at an advanced stage of recovery, expecting to be declared Ebola-free by mid-April before the latest case in the capital Monrovia.
Since the outbreak began in December 2013, more than 24,000 people in nine countries have been infected with the virus, and over 10,000 of them have died.
All but a handful of those deaths have occurred in Liberia and its neighbours, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
But the tide seemed to have turned in Liberia, which six months ago was reporting more than 300 new cases a week.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced earlier this month that no new case of the deadly virus had been registered in Liberia since February 19.
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