The first wave of people who were being monitored because they had direct contact with the first Ebola patient in the U.S. were declared free of the disease early Monday, an important step in the containment effort.

The Texas Department of State Health said 43 people were in the clear after they had contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, who died of the disease Oct. 8. Health officials have been taking their temperature twice daily for 21 days, the longest incubation period for the virus, and said that none have developed symptoms. Those individuals will now be taken off the watch list and will no longer need to be checked for symptoms.

At least two health care workers who helped treat Duncan have been infected, amid an outbreak that has killed more than 4,500 people in West Africa.

The group taken off the watch list Monday includes “a mix of health care workers, household contacts and community members whose last possible contact with the state’s first patient was Sept. 28,” the department said. They had to make themselves available for daily monitoring and were told not to leave the state during the incubation period.

The four people who lived with Duncan after he arrived from Liberia, where he contracted the disease, have also shown no signs of infection and will be taken off the watch list. They included Louise Troh, Duncan’s girlfriend, his son with Troh and two young men. They were placed under quarantine because of their high risk but will be now allowed to leave their temporary home.

“We are so happy this is coming to an end, and we are so grateful that none of us has shown any sign of illness,” Troh said in a statement. “We ask to be given privacy as we seek to rebuild our home, our family and our daily living.”

Nigeria declared Ebola-free

The World Health Organization declared Nigeria free of Ebola on Monday, a containment victory in an outbreak that has stymied other countries’ response efforts. It's been 42 days since the last new case

The milestone came at about 11 a.m. local time, or 6 a.m., E.T. The outbreak has killed more than 4,500 in West Africa is remains unchecked in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, so Nigeria is by no means immune to another outbreak.

“It’s possible to control Ebola. It’s possible to defeat Ebola. We’ve seen it here in Nigeria,” Nigerian Minister of Health Onyebuchi Chukwu told TIME. “If any cases emerge in the future, it will be considered, by international standards, a separate outbreak. If that happens, Nigeria will be ready and able to confront it exactly as we have done with this outbreak.”

For the WHO to declare Nigeria as Ebola-free, the country had to make it 42 days with no new cases (double the incubation period), verify that it actively sought out all possible contacts, and show negative test results for any suspected cases.

Nigeria had 20 cases of Ebola after a Liberian-American man named Patrick Sawyer flew into Lagos and collapsed at the airport. Health care workers treating Sawyer were infected, and as it spread it ultimately killed eight people, a low number next to the thousands of cases and deaths in other countries. Nigeria’s health system is considered more robust, but there was significant concern from experts that a case would pop up in one of the country’s dense-populated slums and catch fire. (Source: Time)

Story Date: October 21, 2014