President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday banned all rallies and other mass gatherings in Monrovia before the senatorial election scheduled in less than two weeks, asserting that they risked worsening the spread of the Ebola outbreak. The president’s order also extended the ban to 30 days after the election. The order came just as Liberia appears to have made progress in slowing the disease, which has also severely afflicted neighboring Guinea and Sierra Leone, and has spread to Mali.
Ebola has now sickened more than 17,200 people in the three worst-hit countries and killed more than 6,100, according to the latest data posted Thursday by the World Health Organization. Half the deaths have been in Liberia.
In issuing the crowd-control order, Ms. Johnson Sirleaf argued that large concentrations of people at election rallies — especially in the Monrovia area, where half the population of four million lives — were precisely the situations that could spawn new infections.
Full Article: Liberia Bans Election Rallies to Fight Ebola – NYTimes.com.
