The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) says laboratory samples from two people isolated in Adamawa State as suspected Ebola cases returned negative results after two rounds of testing.
"Fortunately, the samples turned out negative for EBV after two rounds of testing," NCDC Director-General Jide Idris said in a statement, as reported. The agency said there is no laboratory-confirmed Ebola case in Adamawa State.
Contact tracing around the two people continues, according to state health documents reported this week.
What happened in Adamawa
On 31 October the NCDC announced that it had identified two suspected Ebola cases in the North-East region. It said both people were isolated, that testing and contact tracing had begun, and that being classed as a suspected case does not mean a person has tested positive. The reports we read do not state outright that these are the same two people as the Adamawa cases, though the region matches.
According to state health documents reported this week, both people were admitted to the isolation centre at the Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital in Yola on 29 October. The state emergency operations centre received an alert from a hospital clinician at 6:45am and notified the state rapid response team, the NCDC state office, the World Health Organization and UNICEF.
A state health ministry memo dated 30 October, signed by state epidemiologist Jones Kadabiyu, recorded 18 contacts traced and line-listed. A preliminary report for Yola North dated 31 October listed 17. The records say one of the two people first showed symptoms on 13 October, travelled to Kenya on 14 October and returned on 25 October, and that the other became symptomatic on 25 October. Symptoms listed include fever, vomiting, fatigue, headache and unexplained bleeding.
Nigeria's wider Ebola situation
Nigeria confirmed its first Ebola case on 20 October, when a Swiss national who had arrived from Uganda tested positive in Abuja. She was isolated and treated, then evacuated to Switzerland by medical plane along with her husband, a close contact, according to the report.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists Nigeria with one confirmed case and no deaths as of 28 October. The agency says the outbreak centred on the Democratic Republic of the Congo has 10,305 confirmed cases and 4,996 confirmed deaths, and calls it the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record. It lists Kenya with nine confirmed cases and two deaths, citing Kenya's health ministry as of 23 October.
The NCDC has urged Nigerians to remain calm and avoid spreading unverified information.
