The deadly Ebola virus has claimed two more lives in Liberia, Minister of Health and Social Welfare Walter Gwenigale said Thursday, taking the death toll to seven in the West African nation.
Gwenigale told a regular press conference in Morovia, the country's capital city, that the two people included a woman who got infected as a result of taking care of her sister who contracted the virus in Lofa county. The woman died Wednesday night, Xinhua reported.
The minister told reporters that after contracting the virus, the woman travelled from Lofa to Chicken-soup Factory in Gardnersville and was later taken to Firestone by the taxi driver where she later died and that her child who is currently sick is being quarantined.
Gwenigale said the other one of the two newly deceased is a 25-year-old man who died at the Tapita Hospital in Nimba county few minutes after he was taken there for treatment.
He said though his death is not proven to be Ebola from standard laboratory test, the ministry concluded that he died of the deadly virus having considered the different signs and symptoms that go along with the virus and observed that they were exactly the same that affected him before he died.
He said Ebola is real and is present in Liberia and that no one Liberian should take it as a joking matter.
Ebola virus is considered one of the most aggressive virus known to date in part because of its rapidity to kill, which can be within one week from exposure or three to four days from the first symptoms become apparent. This leaves very little time for any treatment to act and save a sick individual.