Topline
More than 130 people have died in the ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the country’s health minister announced on Tuesday, as the head of the World Health Organization said he was “deeply concerned” about the rapidly growing outbreak just days after declaring it a public health emergency.
A border health officer at the Busunga crossing between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo checks a traveler’s temperature using a contactless infrared thermometer.
AFP via Getty Images
Timeline
DRC health officials announced that 131 deaths and 513 suspected cases have been linked to the outbreak in the country, up sharply from 80 deaths and 246 suspected cases.
A spokesperson for the country’s government also told the BBC News that cases were now being reported over a larger area than earlier, signaling a wider spread.
Speaking at the ongoing World Health Assembly in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was “deeply concerned by the scale and the speed of the epidemic.”
Tedros said 30 cases have been confirmed in the DRC so far, while noting that cases have been reported in major urban areas including Uganda’s capital Kampala and the city Goma in the DRC.
The American patient will be medically evacuated from the Congo and taken to Germany for care, Satish Pillai at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, adding six other Americans are in the process of being evacuated from the area for treatment or monitoring.
The CDC says the ongoing risk to the American public is “low.”
The CDC and the Department of Homeland Security announce new travel restrictions related to the Ebola outbreak, including enhanced public health screening for people arriving from affected areas and entry restrictions for non-U.S. passport holders who have been in Uganda, the Congo or South Sudan in the last 21 days.
Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, tells BBC News more than 100 people have died from the Ebola outbreak and there are at least 395 suspected cases.
Citing unnamed sources, Stat News reports several Americans had “high-risk exposures” to Ebola while working in the Congo and says one has developed symptoms consistent with the disease.
The CDC says it is working to extract a “small number of Americans who are directly affected by this outbreak” from the Congo.
The World Health Organization declares the outbreak an “extraordinary event” that could pose a public health risk to multiple nations and possibly require a coordinated international response in the near future.
The WHO announces at least 80 people have died, including one patient who died in Uganda after traveling to the neighboring country from the Congo.
Laboratory tests confirm the outbreak is of the Bundibugyo strain, for which there is no vaccine, and the same strain that carried a 32% mortality rate during a 2007 outbreak.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention confirms an Ebola outbreak in the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, reporting the disease has sickened 246 people and killed 65, and says officials are worried about further infections due to frequent travel in the area, few resources to combat spread and difficulties with contract tracing in the remote region.
When Did The Outbreak Begin?
Health officials believe the ongoing outbreak began several weeks before the WHO stepped in an declared a public health emergency. According to the Associated Press, the first suspected case involved a health care worker and it was reported in late April but the exact date is unclear. DRC’s health minister says the person died on April 24, but the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it was on April 27. Initial testing was more focused on the more common Ebola virus strain and the first few samples tested negative. But two weeks later, authorities were able to establish that the outbreak was being caused by the rarer Bundibugyo variant of the virus.
Key Background
The ongoing Ebola outbreak marks the 17th in the DRC over the last 50 years but comes only months after another, declared over in December, killed 45 people. Most previous outbreaks were of Ebola-Zaire strains of the virus, for which public health officials have approved vaccines, but the Bundibugyo strain spreading now has no approved vaccine or treatment method. The only way to help those infected is to provide supportive care, health officials say, like giving medicine to support blood pressure, reduce vomiting and diarrhea, and manage fever and pain. A 2007 outbreak of Bundibugyo had a 32% fatality rate, similar to untreated cases of smallpox and typhoid fever.
Surprising Fact
The last time Ebola was in the United States was in 2014, during a global outbreak that saw 11 cases in the country. Of those, nine people contracted the virus in West Africa and were later transported to the U.S. for specialized medical treatment. Two people died. The other two cases were identified in nurses who contracted Ebola in the United States after treating a patient in Dallas. They both survived.
Tangent
The Global Preparedness Monitoring Board, established by the WHO and World Bank, on Monday warned the world isn’t ready for another pandemic despite what was learned during the COVID outbreak six years ago. In a new report, the board said global health research, prevention and preparedness has not kept pace with an increasing frequency and intensity of infectious disease epidemics and warned any pandemic will “strike a world more divided, more indebted and less able to protect its people than it was a decade ago.
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