Country Overview (up to 17th January)
Number of Cases
After a downwards trend during week 47 and 48 the overall number of cases stabilised until week 51. The slight increase in weeks 49 and 50 is likely due to the uptake of active surveillance in the Western area. From week 52 th e VHF data is less reliable as the weeks 52 to 1 are incomplete due to ongoing data entry in th e districts (Fig. 1).
The weekly reports generated from the district line lists during this period may be more reliable for confirmed cases as they are calculated based on laboratory results. Information from this data source confirmed a downward trend in confirmed cases in the time period that correlates to week 52 in the VHF reporting up until 17 January. The decrease is from 337 confirmed cases reported between 22 to 28 December; 185 reported between 29 December to 4 January; 184 reported between 5 to 11 January; 97 between the 12 to 17 January (note this is 6 days of data). The highest number of case s continue to be reported from Western Area and Port Loko and this is the same for the VHF data and the laboratory reports (Fig. 2).