Country to impose 3-day curfew in a bid to contain epidemic

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March 19, 2015 5:24 PM

According to the country's National Ebola Response Centre, the lockdown will affect close to 2.5m people.

Owing to the still increasing number of Ebola cases in Sierra Leone, the country is set to impose a 3-day lockdown of key parts in order to try to contain the epidemic, BBC reports.

The areas that will be on lockdown include the country's capital, Freetown, Bombali and Port Loko and the it will run from March 27 to March 29 .

In September, a similar approach had been taken where people were kept at home under quarantine and the move was hailed as successful by authorities, although there was criticism from some quaters.

So far, there have been 3,325 confirmed deaths from Ebola in Sierra Leone, with 55 new cases confirmed in the last week from Sunday.

The number of cases have however slowed since the peak of the outbreak.

Speaking on this, Palo Conteh, head of the NERC said:

"The government and partners are hopeful that latent cases that are now not being reported or recorded will come out."

He further said that health workers will visit every house in the areas affected by the lockdown, reminding people about the dangers of touching corpses and taking patients to traditional healers.

There have been 10,179 deaths due to Ebola.

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