The Congolese government on Sunday said that suspected Ebola cases in the country have passed 900.
Since the start of the outbreak 904 suspected cases have been reported in the Democratic Republic of Congo, of which 101 were confirmed, the Congolese Ministry of Communication said in a post on social media platform X.
The ministry revised the number of suspected deaths to 119, down from 204 a day earlier, with 10 Ebola deaths confirmed in laboratory tests.
The Ebola epidemic remains active in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu, and South Kivu, the ministry said.
In neighbouring Uganda, five confirmed cases were reported in connection with the outbreak in eastern Congo. Uganda does not publish figures for suspected cases.
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.
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 involved in the current outbreak.
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.
