Congo says 2,000 people have died in its Ebola outbreak, the fastest growing on record

BUNIA, Congo — At least 2,000 people have died in Congo’s Ebola outbreak, the fastest-growing on record, according to the latest data, as health authorities struggle to get help to remote localities because of rebel conflict, bad roads and work stoppages over payment issues.

Government data published overnight into Tuesday showed the outbreak has recorded a total of 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths. That death toll was reached almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak that was the worst in history.

This outbreak was declared on May 15, but health authorities say sequencing showed it began in February.

While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to record the first 1,000 deaths, it’s taken just around three weeks for the figure to double, evidence that the health crisis is moving faster than efforts to track and manage it.

The 2,000 death toll is “alarming” and calls for response efforts to double up in affected localities, said Dr. Jean-Marie Akandabo, who is helping manage patients at a local clinic in Ituri.

It’s already the second-largest outbreak in history, behind only the 2014-16 West Africa outbreak that recorded more than 28,000 cases and 11,000 deaths.

The Ebola outbreak is unlike most previous ones because the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or treatments. Clinical trials for those have begun in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, in eastern Congo.

Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace response that’s been expanding across the five eastern provinces affected. Many health workers have gone on strike to protest lack of payment for their work since the outbreak was declared. And the World Health Organization has said most new cases still are being recorded outside of contacts being monitored, showing that transmission remains out of the control of health workers.

This outbreak has killed a percentage of cases because of limited care

Ebola can be caused by different types of virus. Although the type responsible for the 2014-16 outbreak is considered the deadliest, government data show this Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people as care and support are not getting to patients quickly enough. Many cases are reporting symptoms late or not at all.

The ongoing outbreak has had a case fatality rate of 45.9%, more than the 39.6% rate recorded in the 2014-16 outbreak.

“In the absence of an effective vaccine, control rests on identifying cases and then nursing them in secure facilities until they recover or sadly perish,” said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom.

In a remote region like this with an ongoing conflict and interrupted communications, routine surveillance can be very difficult and “identifying cases early enough to prevent spread can be impossible,” Hunter said.

‘No one is safe’

Dr. Akandabo in Ituri said that the major challenges he’s seen are the limited care for patients and poor community engagement.

“We must not take this disease lightly, because it continues to kill and no one is safe,” he said.

The WHO said on Monday that at the onset of the outbreak in one of Congo’s most remote and vulnerable areas, some cases were wrongly attributed to malaria and typhoid, and that early testing was conducted for the more common type of Ebola.

The WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a news conference that officials are “chasing the virus; the virus is ahead of us.”

The first Ebola virus to be identified was in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. This outbreak is the 17th, and largest, the Central African nation has faced.

Asadu and Bagalwa write for the Associated Press.