DR Congo raises the death toll to 625 and confirmed Ebola cases to 1,792

Nairobi.- The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has raised the death toll to 625 and confirmed cases to 1,792 due to the Ebola outbreak declared in the east of the country on May 15.

According to the latest bulletin issued by the Ministry of Communication and Media, with data collected up to July 9, the case fatality rate currently stands at 34.1%.

In addition, 764 patients are in a situation of “isolation/hospitalization”, and another 295 people have managed to recover from the disease.

The contact tracing rate stands at 78.6%, the authorities specified.

The outbreak is concentrated in the eastern provinces of Ituri (the epicenter of the epidemic), North Kivu, and South Kivu, although “investigations are ongoing regarding the two cases detected in Kisangani” in Tshopo province, the ministry added.

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The outbreak was officially declared on May 15 in Ituri, a province bordering Uganda and South Sudan.

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The epidemic also spread to Uganda, where 20 confirmed infections have been detected, including 15 cases considered imported from the DRC, among which there are two deaths.

The outbreak corresponds to the Bundibugyo strain, whose case fatality rate ranges between 30% and 50% and for which there is no authorized vaccine or specific treatment, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which considers the risk of the outbreak spreading in sub-Saharan Africa to be “high” and “low” on a global scale.

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The WHO estimates that the virus began circulating in Ituri about two months before the outbreak was declared and classified the epidemic on May 17 as a “public health emergency of international concern“.

This is the third worst Ebola epidemic in history recorded to date, and it is the seventeenth to affect the DRC.

The current outbreak is only behind the one that hit West Africa between 2014 and 2016, which left about 11,000 dead and 28,000 infected; and another that affected the eastern Congo between 2018 and 2020 and caused 2,299 deaths and 3,481 cases.

The Ebola virus is transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids from infected people or animals and causes severe hemorrhagic fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and internal bleeding.