No secondary Ebola infection: NCDC discharges last of 62 contacts as Nigeria's 21-day monitoring ends with zero new cases

Photo: NCDC Director-General Dr Jide Idris at an NCDC press briefing · Photo: NCDC / Premium Times (FILE PHOTO)

Three weeks of national anxiety, ended with the best possible news — zero secondary cases — but the NCDC is deliberately refusing to call it over.

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) announced on Friday, 13 November, that none of the 62 people exposed to Nigeria's imported case of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola Virus Disease developed the infection after completing the mandatory 21-day monitoring period, and that the last person under monitoring was discharged today.

NCDC Director-General Dr Jide Idris gave the update in a briefing on the response to the imported case confirmed in the Federal Capital Territory on 20 October 2026 — a Swiss woman who had travelled from Uganda, Nigeria's first Ebola case in more than a decade and the fifth country affected by the Bundibugyo strain.

Thirteen of the 62 contacts reported fever or other symptoms during monitoring, but laboratory tests confirmed none had contracted the virus. The agency also investigated seven suspected cases reported in Adamawa, Rivers, Borno, Lagos and Ekiti states over the last three weeks; all seven tested negative. Two suspected cases identified in Yola, Adamawa State, were ruled out after two rounds of laboratory testing.

Idris cautioned that completing contact monitoring is not a formal declaration that Nigeria is Ebola-free: under WHO protocols, a country must complete a full 42-day countdown from the recovery or departure of the last confirmed patient before an official end-of-outbreak declaration. The index patient was evacuated to Switzerland on 26 October for further care, alongside her husband, a close contact. The NCDC toll-free line is 6232.

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