By Erikas Mwisi and Emma Farge
BUNIA, Democratic Republic of Congo, May 19 (Reuters) – Twenty-six more suspected Ebola deaths were recorded in 24 hours in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, authorities said on Tuesday, and the head of the World Health Organization expressed deep concern about the outbreak’s spread.
The new deaths brought to 131 the fatalities associated with the outbreak in eastern DRC. There have been 543 suspected cases and 33 confirmed cases in DRC, according to Congolese health authorities, and two confirmed cases in neighboring Uganda.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus a public health emergency of international concern on Saturday, the first time a WHO chief has done so before convening an emergency committee.
The outbreak has alarmed experts because it was able to spread for weeks undetected across a densely populated area ravaged by widespread armed violence. A 2018-2020 outbreak in eastern DRC was the second deadliest on record, killing nearly 2,300 people.
Butembo, a city of hundreds of thousands of people, recorded its first two confirmed cases on Monday, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), told Reuters.
Ugandan authorities have started restricting movement across the Ishasha-Kyeshero border crossing, Ambrose Amanyire Mwesigye, a local government official, told Reuters, though he said the border was not formally closed.
Further south, Congolese people trying to cross into Rwanda from the cities of Goma and Bukavu were being stopped at the border, Reuters reporters said. Rwandan officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The WHO had on Saturday urged countries not to close their borders, saying this could lead to informal border crossings that are not monitored.
AMERICANS TO BE EVACUATED TO GERMANY
Ebola, which spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids from infected people or animals, has an average fatality rate of around 50%, according to the WHO.
“I’m deeply concerned about the scale and speed of the epidemic,” Tedros told members of the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Tuesday.
WHO’s representative in DRC, Anne Ancia, said identifying cases was slowed by limited diagnostic capacity for the Bundibugyo strain, with just six tests possible per hour.
Experts say the delays in detecting the outbreak show gaps in preparedness following cutbacks by the U.S. and other major donors to global health funding.
“We seemed to have wasted a pandemic because everybody has gone back to doing what they’re doing,” Sierra Leone’s health minister, Austin Demby, said in Geneva.
One American has tested positive for Ebola, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Monday.
The individual, identified as Dr Peter Stafford by his Christian mission organization, and six other Americans who were exposed to the virus were being moved to Germany for care and monitoring, the CDC said.
The U.S. suspended entry of travelers who had been in the DRC, Uganda or South Sudan during the past 21 days, with certain exceptions, for 30 days and urged Americans not to travel to those countries for any reason.
In a statement on Tuesday, Africa CDC, the continent’s top health agency, said such restrictions can hurt economies, discourage transparency and complicate humanitarian operations.
EXPERTS TRY TO DEVELOP TREATMENTS AND VACCINES
Unlike with the more common Zaire strain, there are no approved virus-specific therapeutics or vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain.
The U.S., which said it had mobilized an initial $13 million to respond to the outbreak, is working to develop a monoclonal antibody therapy as a potential treatment, the CDC said.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Washington that he was worried about the Ebola situation and that U.S. funds would help open 50 clinics to treat Ebola cases.
“It’s a little tough to get to it because it’s in a rural area … But we’ll have more to announce on that. We’re going to lean into it pretty heavy,” he said, without providing details.
A panel of experts led by the WHO was meeting on Tuesday to discuss vaccine options that could help tackle the outbreak. The WHO’s Ancia said Merck & Co’s Ervebo was one candidate but that it would take two months to be available.
President Donald Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the WHO in January after criticizing its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ancia said the WHO had been working “very well” with the U.S. government on the Ebola outbreak but reductions in health funding had had a “tremendous impact” on the organization’s ability to counter the disease.
(Emma Farge reported from Geneva; Additional reporting by Jennifer Rigby in London, Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva and Elias Biryabarema in Kampala, Michael Martina in Washington; Writing by Aaron Ross and David Lewis; Editing by Timothy Heritage and Gareth Jones)
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