Monrovia: The largest recorded Ebola outbreak in history has led the US Peace Corps to evacuate hundreds of volunteers from three affected West African countries, and a State Department official has said two volunteers were under isolation after having contact with a person who later died of the virus.
Meanwhile, Liberia’s president ordered the nation’s schools to shut down and most civil servants to stay home as fears deepened over the virus that already has killed more than 670 people in West Africa.
The Peace Corps said on Wednesday it was evacuating 340 volunteers from Liberia as well as neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone.
The State Department official said the two volunteers were not symptomatic and were under observation. The official was not authorised to discuss the cases for attribution, and declined to say where the volunteers were serving or when they were exposed.
Ebola has no vaccine and no specific treatment, with a fatality rate of at least 60 per cent.(AP)
