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FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) -- Streets in Sierra Leone's
capital bustled again Monday after an unprecedented nationwide shutdown
during which officials said more than 1 million households were checked
for Ebola patients and given information on how to prevent the spread of
the deadly disease.
The government delayed an announcement on how many new cases had been discovered.
The
national health system, already hit by the Ebola deaths of several
leading doctors and many nurses, would be further strained if many
additional patients were found.
Sierra Leone
and Liberia, which have been hardest hit in this outbreak, have only
about 20 percent of the beds they need to treat patients, according to
the World Health Organization.
The Sierra
Leone government has ordered tents for temporary treatment centers to
make room for those additional cases, said Abdulai Bayraytay, a
government spokesman.
Liberia opened a 150-bed
treatment center on Sunday, its largest so far, and ambulances
immediately rushed patients there. By Monday, the new clinic had
admitted 112 people, though only 46 of those have tested positive for
Ebola, said Assistant Health Minister Tolbert Nyenswah. The rest are
being held for observation and treated for other diseases, like malaria.
Ebola,
transmitted through bodily fluids, is blamed for the deaths of more
than 2,800 people in West Africa, according to new figures released
Monday by the World Health Organization. More than 5,800 people are
believed to have been sickened in the outbreak. The vast majority of the
cases and deaths have been in Liberia but the disease has also affected
Guinea, Nigeria and Senegal.
The hardest hit
countries have resorted to extraordinary measures. Liberia has cordoned
off entire towns or neighborhoods and Sierra Leone's nationwide shutdown
is believed to be the most sweeping lockdown against disease since the
Middle Ages.
During Sierra Leone's shutdown,
at least 77 bodies were buried during the shutdown and half of them
tested positive for Ebola, Bayraytay, the spokesman, said. Officials are
waiting on laboratory tests for the other half to see whether they also
died of Ebola. The disease is thought to have killed more than 600
people in Sierra Leone, a nation of 6 million.
The
number of new suspected Ebola cases that were discovered during the
lockdown will be announced by Sierra Leone authorities at a press
conference Tuesday, originally scheduled for Monday.
There
is little reason to believe the lockdown had been effective in ending
transmission since such measures are so hard to enforce, said Joe Amon,
director of health and human rights for Human Rights Watch. Frustrated
residents complained of food shortages in some neighborhoods.
"You
could argue that it's strictly necessary not because it's an effective
way to break transmission but because it's necessary to reach people
with communication messages," he said.
Teams
carrying soap and information about Ebola reached about 75 percent of
1.5 million households in this nation, the Health Ministry said. Rumors
that the soap being distributed had been poisoned showed the importance
of education efforts.
Sierra Leone residents
overwhelmingly complied by staying in their homes but in one incident
health workers trying to bury five bodies 20 kilometers (12 miles) east
of Freetown were attacked on Saturday. After police reinforcements
arrived, the health workers completed the burial.
Nearly
350 health workers in West Africa have been infected, and more than
half of those have died. A Spanish priest who became infected while
serving as a medical director for a hospital in Sierra Leone was flown
back to Spain on Monday.
There are no approved
treatments or vaccines for Ebola, but officials have been trying out
experimental drugs during this outbreak. The small supply of one drug,
ZMapp, was exhausted after being used on a few patients.
On
Monday, Tekmira Pharmaceuticals of Canada said that its experimental
Ebola treatment had been used for a number of patients, and regulators
in the U.S. and Canada had approved its use in more. It said the drug
had been well tolerated so far.
Tekmira said
there were limited supplies of its TKM-Ebola drug and because it has not
been used in an actual study, the company acknowledged it is impossible
to tell if it had any effect.
