Ebola spreading into new areas in northeast DR Congo: WHO

GENEVA: The Ebola outbreak in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading into new areas, the World Health Organization warned Friday.

Much more needs to be done to get on top of the virus, the WHO said, with isolation bed capacity far below anticipated needs given how it is spreading.

Since the outbreak was declared on May 15, there have been 676 confirmed Ebola cases, including 136 deaths in the DRC, according to the latest figures from the WHO.

There are a further 119 suspected cases, while 32 patients have recovered.

No approved vaccines or treatments exist for the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus responsible for the current outbreak, which is centred on Ituri province, with cases also detected in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.

“The outbreak continues to expand both in terms of case numbers but also in terms of geographic spread,” said Olivier le Polain, the WHO’s head of epidemiology and analytics for response.

Speaking from Beni in North Kivu, he said that cases were being identified in new health zones within the three affected provinces on an almost daily basis.

“That reflects really the scale of this outbreak: a scale that is much bigger than what is being detected, and the high mobility of the population,” he told reporters in Geneva.

Le Polain said that while in recent weeks, cases in new areas could be traced back to travel from hotspots, now “we also see local community spread in new areas”.

“There are still many blind spots in some areas that are high risk,” he added.

“The full scale of the outbreak is not yet clear and we’ll get more clarity as surveillance improves.”

Contact tracing

Le Polain said contact tracing was getting better but remained below ideal levels.

“We are now at just over 70 percent in terms of contacts that are being appropriately traced. That’s a huge improvement from where we were about a week or two ago, but it’s still too low to ensure appropriate control,” he said.

“There’s a lot more that needs to be done across the board: more supplies to ensure that we’ve got safe spaces to isolate patients. Surveillance can scale up, but if you don’t have any space to put your patients safely, it becomes very difficult,” he added.

He said that “compared to where the epidemiology is heading”, the current capacity of 250 isolation beds across the affected provinces would not be enough and needed scaling up “quite rapidly”.

The outbreak has also spread across the border into Uganda, which has recorded 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths.

The African Union’s health agency said Thursday that the situation in Uganda was “under control”.