Bumbasor/iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — In a report issued on Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Ebola survivors avoid unprotected sexual activity in an effort to ensure that the spread of the disease is contained.
The report details the case of a 44-year-old woman in Monrovia, Liberia who contracted the disease approximately one month after the most recent confirmed Ebola patient was isolated. The typical incubation period for Ebola is 21 days.
The CDC says that the woman’s only link to the disease was unprotected sex with an Ebola survivor. As a result, the agency now believes that the virus may survive longer in semen than previously believed.
“Ebola virus has been isolated from semen as long as 82 days after symptom onset,” the CDC report notes. “CDC now recommends that contact with semen from male Ebola survivors be avoided until more information regarding the duration and infectiousness of viral shedding in body fluids is known.”
“If male surivors have sex,” the report adds, “a codnom should be used correctly and consistently every time.”
While transmission of Ebola in West Africa has dipped in recent months, the CDC warns that sexual transmission is possible
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