DR Congo’s worst Ebola epidemic ever passes 7,000 cases

Congolese authorities report that 7,022 people have been registered with Ebola in the country’s largest-ever epidemic, with 3,398 fatalities so far and 837 individuals currently isolated or undergoing treatment. Officials say the outbreak was officially identified in mid-May, although experts believe transmission likely began weeks earlier. Health authorities trace the origin of this, the DRC’s 17th Ebola epidemic, to Ituri province in the northeast. Since then the virus has moved across remote eastern and northern zones of the country, areas long affected by armed groups, weak state presence and limited health services. Earlier this week a case was confirmed in South-Ubangi in the northwest, marking at least seven provinces with detected infections. The outbreak has affected communities and schools in Ituri following students’ return after the summer break. Parents and health workers have expressed alarm about the difficulty of tracking children’s household contacts and the potential for unnoticed spread. Local school officials have put in place mandatory hand-washing with soap, capped class sizes at about 30 pupils and told students to avoid touching or greeting one another to reduce transmission. The Bundibugyo strain involved in this epidemic is rare and currently has no approved vaccine or specific treatment, though several candidate vaccines and therapies are under evaluation. Ebola as a disease has caused more than 15,000 deaths in Africa over the past five decades; the continent’s deadliest recent epidemic, caused by the Zaire Ebola virus in 2014–2016, resulted in over 11,325 deaths, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.