The Ebola outbreak in Nigeria may be drawing to a close due to a rapid response coordinated by Nigeria’s Emergency Operations Center with help from international partners such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Ebola outbreak officially ends when two of the 21-day incubation periods for the disease have passed without any new cases.

The Ebola outbreak included 19 laboratory-confirmed and one suspected Ebola cases in two Nigerian states. Roughly 900 patient contacts were identified and followed and all but three have completed 21 days of follow-up without any Ebola symptoms. No new cases have been reported since August 31 and the remaining three patient contacts will end their 21-day follow-up on October 2, which strongly suggests that the outbreak in Nigeria has been contained. A report on Nigeria’s response to the Ebola outbreak appears in a September 30 early release issue of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, said in a statement, “Although Nigeria isn’t completely out of the woods, their extensive response to a single case of Ebola shows that control is possible with rapid, focused interventions.” He continued, “Countries throughout the region as well as Nigeria need to take rapid steps to prepare for possible cases of Ebola in order to prevent outbreaks in their country.”

According to the World Health Organization, the number of patients with Ebola in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone surpassed 6,500 with over 3,000 deaths as of September 30, 2014.