Escaped Ebola Patients Found as Outbreak Death Toll Tops 1,200
WHO reported 113 new Ebola cases in two days.
— -- intro: The Ebola outbreak continues to spread with an additional 113 cases reported over two days.
The virus has killed at least 1,229 and sickened 1,011 more, according to numbers released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.
Click here for more headlines from the Ebola outbreak.
The outbreak is already the deadliest on record and has shown no signs of slowing. About 44.2 percent of all Ebola deaths since the virus was discovered in 1976 have occurred since March 2014, according to WHO data.
Here are nine things you should know about the outbreak as fears continue to mount in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and beyond.
quicklist: 1category: What’s Happening Now in the Ebola Outbreak title: Patients Found After Fleeing Ebola Centertext: Early Saturday morning, a mob looted an Ebola center in West Point, Liberia, stealing contaminated equipment, bloodstained mattresses and sheets, according to the Associated Press. An estimated 37 patients fled during the raid, 17 of whom remained missing on Monday. They have since been found.
Liberian Information Minister Lewis Brown told the AP that the West Point raid forced the country to learn “a bit of a bitter lesson.”
"This West Point situation really was our greatest setback since we started this fight, and we are working on making sure that we can correct that situation," he told the AP.
WHO called for the protection of health care workers Monday in honor of World Humanitarian Day, noting that workers have been threatened and harassed in West Africa as a result of the Ebola outbreak.
“Doctors, nurses and other health workers must be allowed to carry out their life-saving humanitarian work free of threat of violence and insecurity,” Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO Director-General, said in a statement.
Tour a School Transformed Into an Ebola Ward
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quicklist: 2category: What’s Happening Now in the Ebola Outbreak title: More Americans Tested for Ebolatext: A 30-year-old woman in New Mexico is being tested for Ebola, according to state officials.
The woman had recently traveled to Sierra Leone and arrived at the hospital with sore throat, headache, muscle aches and fever, according to the New Mexico Department of Health, which is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rule out Ebola.
Potential Ebola patients at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, Johns Hopkins Medicine in Maryland and an undisclosed hospital in Ohio have all tested negative for Ebola over the past several weeks. The CDC had sent a health alert to hospitals across the country urging them to ask patients about their travel history to help identify potential Ebola cases.
As of Aug. 5, the CDC had tested blood samples for six possible Ebola patients in the United States. They were all negative.
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quicklist: 3category: What’s Happening Now in the Ebola Outbreak title: Officials Request Exit Screenings at Airports, Seaportstext: The World Health Organization on Monday requested exit screenings at international airports, seaports and land crossings in all countries affected by the Ebola outbreak.
“Any person with an illness consistent with [Ebola virus disease] should not be allowed to travel unless the travel is part of an appropriate medical evacuation,” WHO said in a statement. “There should be no international travel of Ebola contacts or cases, unless the travel is part of an appropriate medical evacuation.”
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