Also Thursday, Doctors Without Borders announced that accelerated clinical trials will be launched in West Africa to speed the search for a treatment for the virus that has killed more than 5,000 people.
In a nationwide address, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf said enough progress has been made to lift emergency measures but added that the move does not mean the outbreak is over. There have been fewer Ebola cases in Monrovia, the capital, though fresh hotspots have emerged. One of those is near the border with Sierra Leone, which along with Guinea has also been hit hard by the disease.
Liberia’s emergency measures closed schools, banned large public gatherings, shut some markets and allowed the government to restrict people’s movements. Schools remain closed, but officials are discussing how and when to reopen them.
Meanwhile, a hospital spokesman in Bamako, Mali’s capital, confirmed Thursday that a girl has become the fourth suspected Ebola victim there.
For months, Mali had been spared from the Ebola crisis despite sharing a border with Guinea, where the epidemic first began. Earlier this week, a nurse was confirmed to have died from Ebola, and a former patient who was an imam and that man’s friend are now also considered probable Ebola deaths, according to WHO.