The sister of the Port Harcourt doctor who died from Ebola has become the latest to test positive to the virus, days after her brother’s demise.
Her test brings to 18 the total number of positive cases in Nigeria, the health ministry said Wednesday.
The late doctor’s wife was also quarantined in Port Harcourt, where some 255 have been put under surveillance.
Only two deaths have been recorded in the city: the doctor who caught the virus from treating an ECOWAS diplomat who evaded surveillance in Lagos and a female patient admitted in the same hospital.
His death sparked concern and rumours his body was transported out of Port Harcourt for burial.
The doctor’s “body has been decontaminated and will be interred in Port Harcourt,” said health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu.
Five other deaths have been recorded in Lagos, starting with Patrick Sawyer who imported the virus and died in a private hospital in July.
All four other deaths were of health workers in direct contact with Sawyer.
Eight other patients have been successfully treated and released from hospital.
The latest patient to leave hospital is
the first on record to have caught the virus without direct contact with Sawyer.
“The last case to be discharged, the first secondary contact to be diagnosed and a spouse of a primary contact of the index case, went home from the isolation ward in Lagos yesterday [Tuesday],” said Chukwu.
Two more patients are undergoing treatment: one in Lagos and another in the Port Harcourt.
Some 41 people are being monitored for symptoms but 320 have been discharged after undergoing 21 days of observation without showing Ebola symptoms.
The health ministry has also struck down rumours of Ebola cases in Abuja and Calabar.
It said blood sample from a rumoured case in Zaria had been sent for testing.
