For days this month, the ambulances from this Ebola treatment unit went out in search of patients, only to return with just one or two suspected cases. And many times, those people ended up testing negative for the disease.
“Where are the patients?” an aid worker wondered aloud as colleagues puzzled over the empty beds at the International Medical Corps treatment unit here in Bong County, Liberia, which opened in mid-September.
Around the country, treatment centers, laboratory workers who test for Ebola, and international and national health officials trying to track the epidemic have noticed an unexpected pattern: There are far fewer people being treated for Ebola than anticipated.
As of Sunday, fewer than half of the 649 treatment beds across the country were occupied, a surprising change in a nation where patients had long been turned away from Ebola units for lack of space.
Now, new admissions to treatment centers are dropping or flatlining, the number of samples being submitted to Ebola laboratories has fallen significantly, and the percentage of people testing positive for the disease has dropped as well.
Dr. Bruce Aylward, the organization’s assistant director general, in a dial-in news conference from its Geneva offices, said that there had been a drop in the number of burials in Liberia and no increases in laboratory-confirmed cases.
While Dr. Aylward cautioned that it was premature to draw conclusions, and that Ebola cases could rise in Liberia again, he appeared to be optimistic that the global effort to combat the outbreak was making headway.
“Do we feel confident that the response is now getting an upper hand on the virus?” he told reporters. “Yes, we are seeing slowing rate of new cases, very definitely” in Liberia.
“The numbers are decreasing, but we don’t know why,” said Malin Lager, a spokeswoman at a Doctors Without Borders treatment center just outside Monrovia, the capital. Its vast campus of white tents, which has a capacity for 253 patients, had only 90 on Sunday.
“It’s too early to celebrate,” Ms. Lager said.
“People ran away,” the Rev. G. Victor Padmore, a member of an Ebola task force here, reported after visiting a community where there had been a case. Days later, in another district, he visited a family that had recently lost a 3-year-old child.
Some rural health workers say the outreach efforts have made residents more willing to report cases and seek treatment.
“It’s not as it was in August or September,” said Kollie Singbeh, an Ebola case investigator for Margibi County.
Elvis Ogweno, a Kenyan nurse who heads the International Medical Corps ambulance team, said that several Ebola-affected communities he had visited still reacted with fear.