Nearly 800 people in Guinea have been vaccinated against Ebola in the past week, including 182 considered to be at “high-risk,” because of possible contacts with infected people, the World Health Organization said Friday.

In total, the WHO’s office in Guinea said more than 1,000 individuals who came in touch with infected people were identified and placed under medical observation.

The WHO is implementing what it calls a “ring vaccination” strategy that involves vaccinating anyone who has made contact with an Ebola victim and anyone else who has come in contact with that person.

Local health authorities in the cities of Nzerekore and Macenta reactivated the emergency coordination mechanism that was in use during the height of the Ebola epidemic, and a new large-scale inter-agency response is in progress.

The WHO is supporting the local effort with doctors, surveillance experts and social mobilizers. The agency also sent two senior Ebola-experienced clinicians to help with Ebola treatment in Nzerekore.

The most recent Ebola flare-up has seen eight cases of the disease and seven deaths since late February. It is the first since the WHO declared the original outbreak over on December 29, 2015.

Risk of new infection clusters

Earlier this week, the WHO announced that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa no longer qualifies as an extraordinary event, and there is a low risk of international spread.

According to the agency, all original chains of the virus transmission have now ended, though new infection clusters will continue to occur due to reintroductions of the virus. Blood tests of the newly confirmed cases indicate they stem from a known transmission chain and are not a new chain introduced by the animal population.

Ebola has killed more than 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia since the outbreak began in Guinea in 2013. [Read More]

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Source: VOA News: Education