Ebola: UN health agency reports new case in Liberia, as experimental vaccine used in Guinea

Lab results confirmed a new case of the Ebola virus in Liberia, the United Nations health agency today announced, while an experimental vaccine against the virus is being used in parts of Guinea to contain the latest flare-up of the virus in that country.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said that national health authorities had convened an emergency meeting early this morning with key partners to coordinate and plan a response. This, after a 30-year old woman died yesterday, as she was being transferred to a hospital in the capital Monrovia.

This latest case marks the third flare-up of the virus since Liberia was officially declared free of Ebola on 9 May 2015.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Guinea, hundreds of people in Guinea's southern prefectures of Nzérékoré and Macenta have been vaccinated with an experimental Ebola vaccine with the aim of containing the latest flare-up of Ebola.

WHO's office in Guinea said more than 800 people have been vaccinated in the past week with the Vesicular Stomatitis Virus-Ebola Virus vaccine – known known as VSV-EBOV.

Those people are part of a group of more than 1,000 who have been identified and are closely being watched after coming in contact with eight individuals known to be infected with Ebola.

Transmission of the deadly virus was believed to have been stopped in the Western African country on 29 December 2015.

Earlier this week, WHO said that Liberia and Guinea, along with Sierra Leone, remain at risk for Ebola flare-ups, largely due to the persistence of the virus in some survivors and urged people to remain on high alert.

WHO has dozens of staff members on the ground in the affected areas working in support of government-led response efforts, as well as to assist Ebola treatment centres.