The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is intensifying at an “exceptional” pace, the World Health Organization warned on Saturday, calling for a significant scaling-up of the health response.<\/p>\n
“This outbreak is now the largest recorded Ebola virus disease outbreak in the country,” the WHO said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The deadliest Ebola outbreak in the DRC killed nearly 2,300 out of almost 3,500 recorded cases between 2018 and 2020.<\/p>\n
The current outbreak was declared on May 15 and is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment.<\/p>\n
As of July 30, a total of 3,605 confirmed cases, including 1,587 deaths, had been reported in the DRC, according to the WHO, indicating a case fatality rate of 44 percent.<\/p>\n
The outbreak is “intensifying, with sustained transmission and continued increases in reported cases and deaths,” the WHO warned, according to AFP.<\/p>\n
Ebola, which spreads through contact with bodily fluids and causes hemorrhagic fever, has killed more than 15,000 people across Africa over the past 50 years.<\/p>\n
The center of the current outbreak is the northeastern Ituri province, which borders South Sudan and Uganda.<\/p>\n
The virus has also spread to four other provinces including North Kivu and South Kivu where provincial capitals and large swathes of land are controlled by the Rwanda-backed M23 armed group.<\/p>\n
“The convergence of insecurity, population displacement and mobility, and cross-border movements complicate response operations and increase the risk of further geographical spread,” the WHO said.<\/p>\n
A vaccine described by the World Health Organization as the “most promising” to fight the current outbreak will be developed by Singapore-based Hilleman Laboratories, it announced on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\nLast week, a first volunteer received the first dose of a different Bundibugyo vaccine being developed by Oxford University under a clinical trial.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is intensifying at an “exceptional” pace, the World Health…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840802,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,84],"class_list":["post-840801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}