An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) has killed 2,011 people out of 4,381 confirmed cases of the virus, officials said yesterday. The latest toll puts it close behind the nation’s deadliest Ebola outbreak in 2018 to 2020 when nearly 2,300 people died out of 3,500 recorded cases.The Ebola outbreak, which has hit the nation’s conflict-plagued eastern and northeastern regions, was declared on May 15, but is thought to have already been spreading for several weeks.
Health workers stand in a new Ebola treatment center in Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, on May 31.
It is the DR Congo’s 17th surge of the highly contagious disease and is already considered the largest in the country’s history “and could well become the largest outbreak ever,” Sania Nishtar, chief executive of the Gavi global vaccine alliance, has said.The case fatality rate of the current outbreak is estimated by Congolese health authorities to be 45.9 percent.
On Friday, WHO vaccine experts recommended a full-scale human trial of Erbovo, the only existing approved Ebola vaccine, to see if it offered cross-protection against the strain of Ebola currently spreading in the DR Congo against which no specific vaccine exists.The Ervebo vaccine has proved safe and efficacious against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola virus and WHO experts said that early data, notably from animal trials, showed it might also give some protection against the rare Bundibugyo strain exploding in the DR Congo.Two potential Bundibugyo vaccines are in the early stages of clinical trials on humans, while a third is being worked on to bring it to that stage.Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids and causes a hemorrhagic fever.
