Ebola Cases in Congo Near 300 With No Approved Vaccine or Treatment

Congo’s Ebola outbreak has grown to at least 282 confirmed cases, the country’s health ministry says, and aid groups warn that the real toll is higher. The disease is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare species of Ebola for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment, according to NPR and ABC News.

The outbreak is centered in Ituri province in the east, where 264 cases have been confirmed, NPR reported. Congo has also logged more than 1,000 suspected cases. The outbreak has killed 42 people in Congo and one in neighboring Uganda, which has reported at least nine cases, according to both outlets. NPR said Uganda has closed its border with Congo. It has spread to 22 health zones across three eastern provinces, according to government data cited by NPR.

The International Rescue Committee warned Monday that the outbreak increasingly resembles the 2018-2020 epidemic in North Kivu, which caused more than 3,400 cases and 2,200 deaths, ABC reported. The group said detection was delayed and the outbreak may have spread undetected since before March. Only about 20 percent of contacts are being traced, at least six health workers have died, and testing is slowed by shortages of diagnostic cartridges, ABC said. Some public health specialists believe the Bundibugyo strain may be slightly less deadly than other Ebola strains, the network added.

Insecurity compounds the problem. NPR said attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces, a rebel group allied with the Islamic State, and by ethnic militias have hindered the response, and that the group’s fighters killed 16 people Saturday in Beni, in North Kivu province, an area also affected by the outbreak.

On vaccines, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations said Monday that it would commit up to $62 million to speed development of three experimental candidates from the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, Moderna and the University of Oxford, NPR reported. ABC said they would be manufactured at the Serum Institute of India. All three are still in development.

There were also signs of progress. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus opened a new treatment center in Bunia, the capital of Ituri, over the weekend and honored five health workers who survived the disease. Congo’s health ministry says the main challenges are early detection, rapid isolation, contact tracing and safe burials, NPR reported.

The United States is involved in a different way. PBS NewsHour reported Monday that hundreds of young people in Kenya protested U.S. plans to set up an Ebola quarantine facility for exposed Americans at an air base, marching to its gates, and that Kenya’s High Court temporarily blocked the plan on Friday. Kenya’s health minister said the facility would serve everyone, not only U.S. nationals, PBS reported.