DAKAR, Senegal — After a nerve-racking countdown, Sierra Leone celebrated a national milestone on Saturday that government officials hoped would help the country finally leave behind a grim chapter in its history: It was officially declared free of Ebola transmissions.
The World Health Organization made the announcement at an official ceremony in Freetown, the capital, after the nation had passed 42 days, or two incubation periods for the virus, without an Ebola case.
The news marks a joyous but tense moment in Sierra Leone, where Ebola has crippled the nation's economy and officials worry the virus could re-emerge at any moment. Saturday's ceremony was broadcast on radio and television stations across the country and included an emotional story from an Ebola response worker who survived infection with the virus.
"It's kind of like a mixed emotion," said Tunis Yahya, director of communications for the country's National Ebola Response Center, speaking by phone from the official ceremony, attended by President Ernest Bai Koroma. "People are happy, but also many are depressed because they lost their families."
The swirl of emotions was evident on the streets of Freetown, where people started gathering at midnight in anticipation of the announcement, dancing in celebration. But there was also quiet reflection. Names of the dead were read aloud, and people gathered for a vigil for health workers who died.
In Sierra Leone, the hardest hit of any nation during the Ebola outbreak, nearly 4,000 people died from the disease; altogether 14,000 were infected. The outbreak has so far killed more than 11,300 people across the world.
Sierra Leone will begin a 90-day period of enhanced surveillance that will run until Feb. 5, with the aim of quickly detecting any new possible cases. Liberia was declared free of the virus about two months ago. But the outbreak is still smoldering in Guinea, where domestic and international health workers have flocked to a cluster of small villages as seven new victims have emerged in recent weeks. Sierra Leone is on high alert to prevent the outbreak from spreading over the border; Guinea's new cases are just 20 miles from the boundary separating the countries.
But for Sierra Leone, Saturday was a time to relish the chance to get back to normal.