•Ebola outbreak
An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed 2,011 people out of 4,381 confirmed cases of the virus, Congolese officials said today.
The latest toll puts it close behind the DRC’s deadliest Ebola outbreak in 2018 to 2020, when nearly 2,300 people died out of 3,500 recorded cases, reports AFP.
The Ebola outbreak, which has hit the DRC’s conflict-plagued eastern and northeastern regions, was declared on May 15 but is thought to have already been spreading for several weeks.
It is the DRC’s 17th surge of the highly contagious disease and is already considered the largest in the country’s history “and could well become the largest outbreak ever”, Sania Nishtar, chief executive of the Gavi global vaccine alliance, has said.
The case fatality rate of the current outbreak is estimated by Congolese health authorities to be 45.9 percent.
On Friday, World Health Organization (WHO) vaccine experts recommended a full-scale human trial of the only existing approved Ebola vaccine to see if it offered cross-protection against the strain of Ebola currently spreading in the DRC against which no specific vaccine currently exists.
The Ervebo vaccine has proved safe and efficacious against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola virus, and WHO experts said that early data, notably from animal trials, showed it may also give some protection against the rare Bundibugyo strain exploding in the DRC.
Two potential Bundibugyo vaccines are in the early stages of clinical trials on humans, while a third is being worked on to bring it to that stage.
Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids and causes a haemorrhagic fever.
