Ebola outbreak in Congo kills dozens, may be hitting hundreds more, Africa's CDC says

KINSHASA, Congo — A new Ebola outbreak has been confirmed in a remote province of eastern Congo, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday. There are 246 suspected cases and 65 deaths so far, the public health body said.

The Ebola virus is highly contagious and can be contracted through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare but severe, and often fatal. Preliminary laboratory results in the new outbreak have detected the Ebola virus in 13 of 20 samples tested, Africa CDC said.  

Ituri province, where the cases have been reported, is more than 1,000 miles from the Congo's capital of Kinshasa, and borders Uganda and South Sudan, raising concern about further spread. 

The cases have been recorded mainly in the Mongwalu and Rwampara health zones, Africa CDC said. Mongwalu is a mining hub with workers constantly coming and going, Dr. Céline Gounder, a CBS News medical correspondent, said. Suspected cases have also been reported in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province and near the border with Uganda.

"There are a lot of factors here that make this a pretty high-risk situation," including that it's an urban area with intense population movement and there are multiple country borders, Gounder said.

Additionally, the Congo has faced attacks by armed groups that have killed dozens and displaced thousands in parts of Ituri province in the past year. The presence of militants can also impede healthcare workers' efforts to test and contact trace, Gounder said.

Africa CDC said it is convening an urgent high-level coordination meeting Friday with health authorities from Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, together with key partners including U.N. agencies and other countries.

"The meeting will focus on immediate response priorities, cross-border coordination, surveillance, laboratory support, infection prevention and control, risk communication, safe and dignified burials, and resource mobilization," it said.

The latest outbreak comes around five months after Congo's last Ebola outbreak was declared over after 43 deaths. This is the 17th outbreak in the central African country since the disease first emerged in the country in 1976. An Ebola outbreak from 2018 to 2020 in eastern Congo killed more than 1,000 people.

An earlier outbreak that swept across West Africa from 2014 to 2016 also killed more than 11,000 people.

Gounder, who was an aid worker in Guinea for two months during the West Africa outbreak, said the factors that contributed to it getting so big are similar to the situation in Ituri.

"It was partly because you had it in urban areas, you were dealing with different country borders and you had migrant workers," she said. "And we have exactly that same pattern this time."

An unusual strain

The strain identified in this outbreak is the Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which has only caused two known outbreaks before this, Gounder said. Both of those past outbreaks were much smaller: 56 cases in Uganda in 2007 and 57 cases in Congo in 2012.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for this strain, Gounder said. The vaccine available is directed at the Zaire strain.

"Right now, we have treatments for the Zaire strain. We have vaccines for the Zaire strain. We do not for other strains," Gounder said.

The fatality rate of the Bundibugyo strain is historically lower than Zaire — roughly 36–40% compared to 60–90% — but it is still extremely deadly, Gounder said. Additionally, because there have been so few outbreaks, there is much less data on the Bundibugyo strain.

Congo, Africa's second-largest country by land area, often faces logistical challenges in responding to disease outbreaks. During last year's outbreak, which lasted three months, the World Health Organization initially faced significant challenges in delivering vaccines due to limited access and scarce funds.

Violence in the Congo

The new outbreak will create more worry for the Congo, which has been battling various armed groups in the east, including the M23 rebel group, which launched a rapid assault in January last year and has since occupied key cities.

Ituri in particular is also battling violence from the Allied Democratic Force, an ISIS-linked militant group that has killed dozens there and in other parts of the east.