Sierra Leone finds 130 new ebola cases in 3-day lockdown

Sierra Leone recorded 130 new cases of the ebola virus during a three-day lockdown, and it is waiting for test results on a further 39 suspected cases, said Stephen Gaojia, head of the Ebola Emergency Operations Centre.

The country had ordered its six million citizens to stay indoors until Sunday night in the most extreme strategy employed by a West African nation since the start of an epidemic that has infected 5,762 people since March and killed 2,793 of those.

“The exercise has been largely successful ... The outreach was just overwhelming. There was massive awareness of the disease,” Gaojia said, noting that authorities reached more than 80% of the households they had intended to target.