Reporting by James Harding Giahyue, Alphonso Toweh; Writing by Bate Felix | From Reuters

An outbreak of Ebola cases in a western Liberia county threatens the country’s goal of recording no new cases of the disease by the end of the year.

From Dec. 1 to 25, some 49 cases of Ebola were reported in Grand Cape Mount County. This included 27 confirmed cases, nine probable and 13 suspected, said Tolbert Nyensuwah, assistant minister for preventive services and the head of Liberia’s Ebola response.

The government had set a Dec 31 target for recording no new Ebola infections. The Grand Cape Mount outbreak makes hitting that target unlikely.

“This is a serious situation and we are going to Cape Mount today along with our international partners and UN agencies,” Nyensuwah told a news conference late Sunday in Monrovia. “We are going there to open an Ebola Treatment Unit.”

Grand Cape Mount is one of Liberia’s least populous counties, with just over 140,000 people. It borders Sierra Leone, where the deadly hemorrhagic fever is also raging.

Read more at Reuters