The outbreak of Ebola caused by the Bundibugyo strain in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has now passed 500 suspected cases and at least 134 deaths, the WHO said in its latest situation report, with 30 cases laboratory-confirmed across eleven health zones in Ituri and North Kivu provinces.
Uganda confirmed its first death from the outbreak on Monday, a traveller from Ituri who fell ill in Kampala and was diagnosed at Mulago National Referral Hospital. A second laboratory-confirmed case in the Ugandan capital is being treated in isolation. Both individuals had crossed the Bunagana border post in the days before symptom onset.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a Geneva briefing on Tuesday that he remained "deeply concerned by the scale and speed" of the outbreak, particularly the spread to Goma — a city of two million on the Rwandan border with extensive regional flight connectivity. Most cases have so far remained in rural Ituri.
The Bundibugyo strain, first identified in Uganda in 2007, is less lethal than the Zaire ebolavirus that drove the West African epidemic a decade ago, but no licensed vaccine or therapeutic exists for it. The Ervebo vaccine developed against Zaire ebolavirus does not provide cross-protection, and trials of an experimental Bundibugyo vaccine candidate at Oxford and the US National Institutes of Health remain at Phase I.
Healthcare workers in eastern Congo told reporters on Wednesday they remain underprotected and undertrained, with personal protective equipment running short at the main treatment centres in Bunia and Boga. Three Congolese nurses have died in the outbreak so far, and contact tracing in active conflict zones has been hampered by the ongoing M23 insurgency.
The CDC issued a Health Alert Network notice over the weekend asking US clinicians to take a detailed travel history from any patient presenting with consistent symptoms. The agency has not recommended border screening at US airports, in contrast to the screening introduced earlier this week in response to a separate suspected US case unrelated to this outbreak.