Liberia announced the return of the deadly Ebola virus on Tuesday as a 17-year-old who died in has tested positive for the virus, the first case in the country since it was declared free of the disease in May.

Liberia announced the return of the deadly Ebola virus on Tuesday as a 17-year-old who died in has tested positive for the virus, the first case in the country since it was declared free of the disease in May.

The patient died at home in the rural village of of Nedowian in Margibi County, which is close to Monrovia, the country's capital city and one of the epicenters of the epidemic several months ago.

"A new case of Ebola has been reported in Margibi County. The person has died and was confirmed positive before death. He has been buried," said deputy health minister Tolbert Nyensuah.

The official told a radio station the experts had traced and quarantined anyone who may have had contact with the victim, without giving numbers or any details on the patient.

"We are investigating to know the origin of this new case. We ask all Liberians and all other nationals living in Liberia to continue taking the preventive measures," he said.

Liberia's neighbors Guinea and Sierra Leone are both battling the outbreak, which has killed more than 11,000 people, but the coastal Margibi County is much nearer the capital Monrovia than either border.

World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva the UN health body had been informed of the case.

Since the current epidemic began in December 2013, more than 11,200 people have died from Ebola with more than 40 percent of them in Liberia. But things had begun to improve as far back as January when the U.S.-built Ebola treatment centers sat nearly empty as the outbreak began to fade.

The epidemic killed more than 4,800 Liberians before the WHO declared the country Ebola-free on May 9, 42 days after the last confirmed case was buried.

That period is double the number of days the virus requires to incubate, and WHO hailed its eradication as an enormous development in the long crisis.