The fastest-growing Ebola outbreak on record started in February, months before it was officially declared in mid-May, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday as responders in eastern Congo struggle to catch up.
The WHO regional director for Africa, Mohamed Yakub Janabi, MD, PhD, told a news conference that sequencing indicated the outbreak's start. He said some cases early on were wrongly attributed to other diseases, including malaria and typhoid.
"So we are chasing the virus, the virus is ahead of us," Janabi said.
Thierno Balde, MD, PhD, WHO's incident manager for the Ebola response, said the genetic sequencing was conducted under the leadership of Steve Ahuka, MD, head of the virology department at Congo's National Institute for Biomedical Research.
As of Tuesday, confirmed cases in the outbreak have reached 4,381, including 2,011 deaths, according to the latest government figures.
