Ebola outbreak in Congo is killing dozens, possibly infecting hundreds, Africa's CDC says

A new outbreak of Ebola has been confirmed in a remote eastern province of Congo, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday. There are 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths so far, the public health agency said.

The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can be acquired through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare but severe, and often fatal. Initial laboratory results in the new outbreak found the Ebola virus in 13 of 20 samples tested, the Africa CDC said.

Ituri province, where the cases were reported, is more than 620 miles from Congo's capital, Kinshasa, and borders Uganda and South Sudan, raising concerns about further spread.

The cases were recorded mainly in the health centers of Mongwalu and Rwampara, said the Africa CDC. Mongwalu is a mining center with employees who keep going up and down, said Dr. Céline Gounder, CBS News health reporter. Suspicious cases were also reported in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province and near the border with Uganda.

“There are a lot of things here that make this situation very vulnerable,” including the fact that it's an urban area with a lot of people moving around and there are a lot of national borders, Gounder said.

In addition, Congo has faced attacks by armed groups that have killed dozens and displaced thousands of people in some areas of Ituri province last year. The presence of the military could also hamper the efforts of health workers to check and find traces, Gounder said.

The Africa CDC said it is calling an urgent high-level coordination meeting on Friday with health authorities in Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, as well as key partners including UN agencies and other countries.

“The meeting will focus on immediate priorities, border crossing coordination, surveillance, laboratory support, infection prevention and control, risk communication, safe and dignified burial, and pooling resources,” the statement said.

The latest outbreak comes nearly five months after the last Ebola outbreak in Congo was declared over after 43 people died. This is the seventeenth outbreak in the country in the middle of Africa since the disease first appeared in the country in 1976. The Ebola outbreak from 2018 to 2020 in eastern Congo killed more than a thousand people.

A previous outbreak in West Africa from 2014 to 2016 also killed more than 11,000 people.

Gounder, who was an aid worker in Guinea for two months when the violence broke out in West Africa, said that the factors that contributed to it being large are similar to the situation in Ituri.

“Part of it is because you have it in urban areas, you are dealing with the borders of different countries and you have migrant workers,” he said. “And we have that same pattern this time.”

Unusual difficulty

The virus identified in this outbreak is Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which has only caused two known outbreaks before this one, Gounder said. Both of those past outbreaks were very small: 56 cases in Uganda in 2007 and 57 cases in Congo in 2012.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for this strain, Gounder said. The vaccine available is directed against the Zaire strain.

“Currently, we have drugs to treat the Zaire strain. We have vaccines for the Zaire strain. We don't use it for other strains,” said Gounder.

Bundibugyo's mortality rate is historically lower than in Zaire – about 36-40% compared to 60-90% – but it is still very deadly, Gounder said. Additionally, because there have been very few outbreaks, there is very little data for the Bundibugyo strain.

Congo, Africa's second largest country in terms of land area, often faces challenges in dealing with disease outbreaks. During last year's outbreak, which lasted three months, the World Health Organization initially faced major challenges in delivering vaccines due to poor access and lack of funding.

Violence in the Congo

The new outbreak will cause more concern for Congo, which has been fighting various armed groups in the east, including The rebel group M23which launched a rapid offensive in January last year and has taken important cities.

Ituri in particular is also fighting violence from the Allied Democratic Force, an ISIS-linked militant group that has killed dozens there and in other parts of the east.