| 1 | Health workers carry a body of a person that they suspected died form the Ebola virus at a new graveyard on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia on March 11, 2015. |
| 2 | DAKAR, Senegal -- New Ebola cases were in the single digits another week, the World Health Organization said Wednesday, showing that contact tracing efforts are yielding results. |
| 3 | The path to zero cases, however, remains a challenge as the West African nations that have seen most of the more than 11,200 deaths from Ebola -- Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia -- head into rainy season. |
| 4 | "Zero is an achievable goal in the near term, there's no question, but there are a lot of hazards between here and there, a lot of rain, still a lot of missing contacts," Dr. Bruce Aylward, WHO's Ebola head, said from Geneva on Tuesday. |
| 5 | WHO reported two confirmed cases of Ebola --one in Guinea and one in Sierra Leone-- in the week ending Aug. 2. |
| 6 | It credited strengthened contact tracing and investigations for what it said was the lowest weekly total since March 2014. |
| 7 | This week, Sierra Leone has reported two new cases, both relatives of a man who died from Ebola in Tonkolili, an area that hadn't seen the deadly virus in months. |
| 8 | Nearly 2,000 contacts are being monitored across five prefectures in Guinea and four districts in Sierra Leone, including 500 in the Tonkolili district, said WHO. |
| 9 | More cases are likely in the coming weeks in Guinea and Sierra Leone. |
| 10 | "There's two or three areas still at particularly high risk of having a flare (of cases)," Dr. Aylward said. |
| 11 | WHO also said in its report that while a vaccine tested in Guinea may prove effective, "more conclusive evidence is needed." |
| 12 | Last week, WHO's chief Dr. Margaret Chan described the shot as a potential "game-changer." |