A woman in Nigeria’s capital has tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, the country’s first confirmed case in roughly ten years. With the result, which came back on Tuesday, Africa’s most populous nation becomes the fifth country touched by the strain since Congo declared its outbreak in May.
Her timeline is what worries health officials. She flew in on 5 October and felt ill two days later. Fever-like complaints that resembled malaria sent her to a private clinic on 11 October; an Ebola test followed only eight days later. For more than a week, then, staff treated her without knowing what they faced. She is now isolated and, the health minister says, getting good care.
Where she caught it remains a point of friction. She travelled via Uganda, but officials there say a transit stop proves nothing about where she was infected, and report no active cases at home. Ugandan authorities add that she had spent time in Congo beforehand.
Forty-four people are now being watched. Most are health workers at the clinic; her Swiss husband is among them too. Fellow passengers on her Ethiopian Airlines flights are being traced as a precaution, although officials believe she showed no symptoms in the air. WHO experts are backing Nigerian teams on the ground.
Minister Muhammad Ali Pate points to 2014, when Nigeria stamped out an imported outbreak quickly. This time the tools are thinner: no vaccine is approved against Bundibugyo. Congo’s tally already tops 9,500 cases and over 4,200 deaths, while Kenya has nine cases in a single cluster.
The next three weeks, the virus’s maximum incubation period, will show whether Abuja caught the case in time.
