Ebola Outbreak Hits Record Setting Pace With Over 5,000 Cases And Nearly 2,500 Dead
An Ebola outbreak tearing through eastern Congo has become the fastest-spreading the world has ever recorded.
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Congo’s Ministry of Health reported the outbreak had climbed to 5,021 cases and 2,378 deaths as of Sunday, according to CBS News. The virus has sickened and killed people faster than any previous Ebola epidemic.
Measured from the first known infection, it has also moved roughly three times quicker than the 2014 to 2016 West Africa outbreak, which killed more than 11,000 people and stands as the deadliest on record, CBS News reported. It is Congo’s seventeenth Ebola epidemic on record, according to Reuters.
The World Health Organization now considers the epidemic the deadliest in Congo’s history, surpassing the 2,299 deaths from the 2018 to 2020 outbreak, UN News reported. (RELATED: Ebola Continues To Surge At Outbreak’s Epicenter)
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a meeting convened by the agency Tuesday that the danger has not eased. “We must be frank: The epidemic is far from being under control,” he said, according to CBS News.
The Bundibugyo species driving the outbreak has no approved vaccine or cure, and existing Ebola drugs were built for a different strain. Vaccine trials are running in the United Kingdom and Canada, and the first volunteer received an experimental dose last month, UN News and Al Jazeera reported.
A mob torched an ambulance and wrecked two other vehicles Monday after residents attacked a health team in the Aru territory, according to CBS News. Some health workers walked off the job over unpaid wages. “The way this epidemic is being managed is exhausting,” nurse Thérèse Anyiya told The Associated Press.
The outbreak has killed 47.4% of confirmed patients overall, climbing to 70% in North Kivu province, according to the New York Post. The virus has now reached 54 health zones across six provinces, WHO data showed, with 751 people hospitalized in isolation, ECDC reported.
Experts trace the first infections to the mining town of Mongbwalu around February, months ahead of the May 15 declaration, the Post reported.
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