Sierra Leone health officials have confirmed a second Ebola case on Thursday, a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that West Africa is free from the deadly virus, per the Associated Press.

According to the publication, the new victim is currently under quarantine. The victim is a relative of the young woman who died on Jan. 12 and one of the people who prepared her corpse for a traditional funeral.

Local authorities allowed the washing of the corpse and other people touching the body as part of the traditional funeral because there was no initial indication that the late victim was infected by Ebola. The virus can spread via direct contact with bodily fluids, corpses being the most contagious and the source of most cases that killed more than 11,000 people in the region.

In a report by Reuters, the first victim was identified as Mariatu Jalloh from Freetown. She was apparently an outpatient in a local hospital but reportedly was not diagnosed with Ebola. WHO and Sierra Leone health officials are investigating where Jalloh contracted that disease. Reports say that she traveled near the Guinean border back in December when the area was declared free from the virus.

The publication also noted that a total of five people washed her corpse with 22 other people living with her before her death. The Sierra Leone's health ministry is anticipating the increase of new cases due to the fact that no health official was able to identify her with Ebola virus.

"We are expecting other cases particularly from those who washed the body before the burial of Marie. It is disappointing of course considering the fact that we have gone for over 100 days since we last recorded a case," health ministry spokesman Sidi Yahya Tunis told reporters via Yahoo! News.

"What is however encouraging is the fact that this particular individual had already been identified as a high-risk contact and she was already isolated at the voluntary facility and we were quickly able to remove her the moment she started exhibiting signs and symptoms," he added.

Brima Kargbo, head of medical services for Sierra Leone, also announced on Thursday that a vaccine called VSV-EBOV will be used in about 150 people that were under quarantine, 42 of which were considered high risk. However, many of those quarantined people are scared to get injected with the vaccine because they think that it will cause other diseases.

According to BBC, the VSV-EBOV is still under clinical trials developed by American pharmaceutical giant Merck. The company recently signed a $5 million deal to have at least 300,000 vaccines ready just in case some isolated Ebola cases appear.