The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a sixth province, officials said on Thursday, as the World Health Organization warned that the epidemic is on track to surpass the deadliest one in history.
Government figures released this week show the outbreak has killed more than 2,100 people out of more than 4,500 recorded cases. Al Jazeera reported the death toll at 2,128 out of approximately 4,566 cases. At the same point in the 2014-16 west Africa outbreak, which killed at least 11,000 people, only 755 cases had been recorded, according to WHO data.
The death toll has been reached almost three times faster than in that previous outbreak. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that at its current pace, the outbreak would surpass the 2014-16 epidemic as the deadliest on record.
Spread to Bas-Uele
Jean Kaseya, the director general of Africa CDC, said on Thursday that a death had been recorded in the previously unaffected Bas-Uele province. The man had travelled from Isiro, in Haut-Uele province, to Buta, the capital of Bas-Uele, where he died. Six of DRC’s 26 provinces have now been affected, mainly those along the country’s north-eastern border.
More than 3,400 of the cases have been recorded in Ituri province, where the outbreak was first reported. Infections have also been recorded in North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo provinces. Uganda has reported 20 cases, all in the capital, Kampala. The last case there was reported on 21 June, and no community transmission has been recorded.
Kaseya warned that if the outbreak is not stopped, it will last more than a year and become the largest in the world, increasing the risk of spread to other countries. The WHO says it is spreading faster than any previous outbreak.
No approved vaccines or treatments
There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus responsible for this outbreak. Clinical trials of two possible treatments began last month in Ituri. Tedros said on Wednesday that two vaccines developed specifically for this strain are now being tested on people for the first time. The UN health agency also plans to test whether an existing Ebola vaccine could protect people against the latest virus after studies in animals showed promising results.
This strain of Bundibugyo is genetically different from previous outbreaks in 2007 and 2012, researchers said in a paper published this week in the journal Nature Medicine. They sequenced genomes from samples of 22 people with Ebola and concluded that this outbreak likely began when the virus jumped from an infected animal to a human. Kaseya said last week that officials were worried the virus could be mutating, and that Africa CDC was planning further studies with the WHO to investigate.
The outbreak was formally declared on 15 May, but the WHO says sequencing now shows the virus began circulating months earlier in February. Health authorities have said between 60% and 70% of new cases are recorded outside contacts being monitored, and that the disease is spreading at an alarming rate. Dr Mohamed Yakub Janabi, the WHO regional director for Africa, said this week: “We are chasing the virus; the virus is ahead of us.”
The outbreak is unfolding amid strikes by some unpaid health workers, global development aid cuts, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatised communities, and misinformation claiming that Ebola is not real. Health workers at the Nizi treatment centre in Ituri province went on strike on Thursday, leading to the temporary closure of the centre, saying they had not been paid for three months.
Abdirahman Mahamud, the head of the WHO’s emergency response division, said on Wednesday that if the pandemic response was implemented at the same time across the five transmission zones, a turnaround could be expected in three months. Even so, he said the peak of the outbreak would not be reached for six months under a moderate scenario, and that the outbreak could last nine to 12 months. Ebola is rare but highly contagious and can be contracted from bodily fluids, including from dead bodies, and from contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing. The disease it causes is severe and often fatal.