The death toll from an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to rise, the Congolese government said on Saturday.
Since the start of the outbreak, 867 suspected cases have been reported, including 204 deaths, the government said. That is more than 100 infections and just over 30 deaths more than the previous day.
So far, 91 infections have been confirmed in laboratory tests, 10 of them fatal. In neighbouring Uganda, five confirmed cases have so far been reported in connection with the outbreak in eastern Congo. Uganda does not publish figures for suspected cases.
Number of cases likely significantly higher
The World Health Organization (WHO) assumes the actual number of cases is significantly higher because the outbreak in eastern Congo went unnoticed for weeks and not all cases have been reported. Clusters of unexplained deaths had already been investigated.
Three Red Cross volunteers are believed to have become infected as early as March 27 when they came into contact with bodies in Ituri province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in Geneva said.
They had been working on another humanitarian mission before it became known that the Ebola virus was spreading. According to the IFRC, they died between May 5 and May 16.
Until now, the earliest known infection in the current outbreak was a man from Congo who was treated for symptoms on April 24 and died three days later.
The first Ebola cases were not confirmed in the laboratory until May 15. On May 17, the WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern. By that point, there were already more than 240 known suspected infections.
As the current outbreak involves the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, the pathogen was not initially confirmed using conventional tests.
No vaccine or treatment yet for rare Ebola variant
Ebola is a contagious and life-threatening infectious disease. The current outbreak is particularly difficult to contain because there is neither a vaccine nor a specific treatment for the rare Bundibugyo strain.
The WHO considers the risk of infection to be very high in Congo, high in the region, but low globally. Unlike the coronavirus, for example, Ebola is not transmitted via airborne droplets, but through close contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person.
