The nurse tested positive for the Ebola virus over the weekend, Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told reporters in Abuja, the capital. That brings the total number of confirmed Ebola cases in Nigeria to 10, including two who have already died, the Liberian-American Patrick Sawyer and another nurse. The other eight cases are being treated in isolation in Lagos. All nine Nigerians were infected through direct contact with Sawyer, said Chukwu.
Nigerian authorities said Monday that a doctor in Lagos has contracted Ebola, the second case in the sprawling megacity as the deadliest ever outbreak of the disease continues to spread fear and panic across west Africa.
The confirmation that a fourth doctor had been infected comes as fear and anger about the dead being left unburied in Liberia’s capital Monrovia brought protesters into the streets, while Sierra Leone’s president said Monday that the epidemic threatened the “very essence” of the nation.
“This new case is one of the doctors who attended to the Liberian Ebola patient who died,” Nigeria’s Health Minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told journalists.
He said that 70 other people believed to have come into contact with the Liberian government official were being monitored.
Nigerian health officials are working to prevent Ebola from spreading beyond those who had contact with Sawyer. Nigerian authorities have 177 primary and secondary contacts of Sawyer under surveillance, said Chukwu.
Ebola has killed 961 people in Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Nigeria.
