FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — Health teams that went door to door in Sierra Leone found 130 confirmed cases of Ebola during a nationwide shutdown to slow the spread of the disease, an official said Tuesday, as authorities consider repeating the unprecedented exercise.
About 70 more suspected cases are still being tested, said Deputy Minister for Political and Public Affairs Karamoh Kabba. In addition, 92 bodies were found during the three-day campaign, during which teams handed out information about the disease to more than 1 million households. It is not yet clear how many of those bodies were positive for Ebola.
The Ebola outbreak sweeping West Africa is believed to have sickened more than 5,800 people and killed more than 2,800, primarily in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The outbreak has overwhelmed already-weak health systems: A shortage of ambulances has stranded many of the sick at home, others have been turned away from teeming treatment centers, and bodies have sometimes not been buried for days. Kabba said Tuesday that there are still delays in collecting bodies in Sierra Leone.
Although many experts initially raised doubts about the lockdown’s ability to slow the outbreak, saying it would be hard to keep the country’s 6 million people at home, the government has hailed it as a success and is considering doing it again.
