Nairobi.- The Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has raised the number of deaths to 1,309 and confirmed cases of Ebola to 2,973 due to the outbreak declared in the east of the country on May 15.
According to the latest bulletin from the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) of the DRC, with data collected up to July 23, the case fatality rate currently stands at 44%.
In addition, 766 patients are in “isolation or hospitalization” and 540 people have managed to recover from the disease, while the contact tracing rate has risen to 73.9%.
So far, five Congolese provinces have been affected by the Ebola outbreak: Ituri (epicenter of the outbreak), North Kivu, South Kivu and Haut-Uele (east), as well as Tshopo (north-central).
The INSP warned that “the results of contact tracing remain insufficient,” so “a reinforcement” of surveillance is needed.
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Transmission phase
Data indicate that the epidemic remains in “a phase of sustained transmission, with a high level of virus circulation,” the agency added, warning that “recent fluctuations should be interpreted with caution due to reporting delays and the progressive consolidation of data.”
After being declared on May 15 in Ituri, a province bordering South Sudan and Uganda, the epidemic also spread to this second country.
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However, Uganda discharged the last patient remaining hospitalized in the country on July 16, after having recorded a total of 20 confirmed infections, including 15 cases considered imported from the DRC, among which there were two deaths.
Uganda thus began the 42-day countdown without new infections necessary to declare the end of the outbreak.
The epidemic 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” at a global scale.
This is the third worst Ebola epidemic in history and the seventeenth to affect the DRC.
The current outbreak is behind the one that hit West Africa between 2014 and 2016, which left about 11,000 dead and 28,000 infections, 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.
