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On Thursday, January 15th, the World Health Organization stated the Ebola outbreak, we’ve heard so much about in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone was officially over. The WHO reported that the process of transmission had ended given there were no new cases in the region within the past 42 days.

The next day, a new death from Ebola was confirmed.

CNN, the BBC along with other news networks were reporting a new case was confirmed, a 22-year-old young woman, who was near the Guinea border was confirmed dead from Ebola. At the time of this post, 27 other individuals are considered exposed and are being monitored by health officials.

How could this be?

In the work of infectious diseases, the data used to calculate exposure rates, deaths, probable infections, possible cases, confirmed cases and the list goes on….are all part of the field work done on the ground, in real time and in some instances in less than ideal circumstances. Field work data is at the mercy of the environment research teams work within, the accuracy of statistical methods, recall of patients and many other variables.

To those of us familiar with the ins-and-outs of epidemiology, the reporting of the end of an outbreak so close to the predicted day of the end of infections followed by the emergence of a new case is not surprising at all. There is a margin of error, confidence intervals and other variables that impact the data used to calculate such items as the end of an infection period.

In West Africa, the issue becomes that individuals, communities and health care providers may let their guard down when health officials make statements that an outbreak is over. It very well may have been, on paper or in statistical models; however, it certainly is not for the people of West Africa.