The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has quickly grown into the second-largest on record, with cases taking just weeks to reach levels that had taken years in previous outbreaks.
There have been at least 3,553 confirmed cases since this outbreak was identified in mid-May, according to data published Friday by the World Health Organization. At least 1,558 people have died.
In just over two months, cases in this outbreak have surpassed the total number reported in another historic Ebola outbreak in the DRC that lasted nearly two years, from August 2018 to June 2020.
The first 1,000 cases in this outbreak were reported within the first 40 days of response activation, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but it took nearly six times as long — about 235 days — to reach more than 1,000 cases during the 2018 outbreak.
Now, the only larger Ebola outbreak is the 2014-16 outbreak in West Africa, which ended with more than 28,600 reported cases and 11,325 deaths.
