During corona pandemic: new Ebola outbreak in Congo

Frankfurt a. M.. The fatal Ebola virus has broken out again in the Congo. The hope of an imminent end to the epidemic was thus dashed. “I can confirm a new Ebola outbreak in Mbandanka,” Health Minister Eteni Longondo said Monday after examining samples at the National Institute of Biomedical Research (INRB). The World Health Organization (WHO) said six cases had been found in the province of Équateur in the west of the country.

In the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, more than a thousand kilometers away, the Ebola virus has been rampant since August 2018, but the epidemic has been largely contained there. It was initially unclear whether the two outbreaks were related.

Accordingly, four deaths are among the six confirmed infections in Equateur. WHO said a team is already working with local authorities in the affected city of Mbandaka to prevent the virus from spreading. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Twitter that the outbreak was a reminder that Covid-19 was not the only health threat.

Ebola and measles spread in the Congo

Ebola broke out in 2018 in the provinces of North Kivu and Ituri in the northeast of the country, around 1,200 kilometers away. Since the outbreak of the disease, more than 3,400 cases have been confirmed there, almost 2,300 people died. Ongoing conflicts make monitoring patients and tracing infections more difficult. Violence by militias and distrust of the population hamper the work of medical teams. As a result, the outbreak was only under control after more than a year.

On March 6, the WHO announced that the last Ebola patient had been released from a treatment center in the city of Beni in eastern Congo. However, shortly before the official announcement of the end of the epidemic, several cases occurred again in early April. In addition to Ebola, the Congo is also fighting a possible outbreak of the corona virus and, according to the WHO, the world’s worst outbreak of measles.

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