WHO says Congo’s Ebola outbreak is on track to surpass the deadliest one in history

The on­go­ing Ebo­la out­break in Con­go is on track to sur­pass the dead­liest one in his­to­ry that killed over 11,000 peo­ple, the head of the World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion said Wednes­day.

“At its cur­rent pace, it’s on track to eclipse the West African Ebo­la out­break of 2014 to 2016,” Tedros Ad­hanom Ghe­breye­sus told re­porters. That out­break hor­ri­fied the world and jolt­ed ef­forts to de­vel­op a vac­cine.

The out­break in east­ern Con­go, con­sid­ered the fastest-grow­ing in his­to­ry, has killed over 2,000 peo­ple out of more than 4,300 cas­es. The out­break was de­clared on May 15, but health au­thor­i­ties now say se­quenc­ing showed it be­gan months ear­li­er, in Feb­ru­ary.

It is un­like re­cent Ebo­la out­breaks be­cause the rare Bundibu­gyo virus re­spon­si­ble for it has no ap­proved vac­cines or treat­ments, though ef­forts to ad­dress that are un­der­way.

WHO says this out­break ‘had a big head start’

Ex­perts say this out­break is mov­ing faster than ef­forts to track and man­age it in a re­mote part of east­ern Con­go fac­ing on­go­ing con­flict, near the bor­ders with South Su­dan, Ugan­da and Rwan­da.

Most new cas­es and deaths are be­ing re­port­ed in com­mu­ni­ties out­side the reach of health work­ers in a re­gion of poor in­fra­struc­ture and ill-equipped health cen­ters. Some work­ers have gone on strike over lack of pay. Mis­in­for­ma­tion about the virus cir­cu­lates in com­mu­ni­ties where some are wary of out­siders, keep­ing some peo­ple from clin­ics.

“The out­break had a big head start, still way ahead of us. and we’re play­ing catch-up,” Tedros said.

Dr. Ab­di­rah­man Ma­hamud, WHO’s di­rec­tor for health emer­gency alert and re­sponse op­er­a­tions, said the agency ex­pects the peak of the out­break to be reached in six months.

“But ... that’s the mod­er­ate sce­nario,” Ma­hamud said. “There is a one-case sce­nario where this out­break may last nine months to 12 months.”

This Ebo­la out­break has killed more peo­ple at a faster rate than any oth­er, in­clud­ing the 2014-2016 out­break that had at least 28,000 cas­es. That one took about eight months to reach 1,000 deaths.

Two vac­cines for this type are be­ing test­ed

Ebo­la is rare but high­ly con­ta­gious and can be con­tract­ed from bod­i­ly flu­ids such as vom­it, blood or se­men and from con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed sur­faces and ma­te­ri­als such as bed­ding and cloth­ing. The dis­ease it caus­es is se­vere and of­ten fa­tal.

Clin­i­cal tri­als of two pos­si­ble treat­ments for this type of Ebo­la be­gan last month in Ituri, the most af­fect­ed of the five provinces where cas­es have been re­port­ed.

Two vac­cines de­vel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for the Bundibu­gyo virus are now be­ing test­ed in peo­ple for the first time, Tedros said Wednes­day.

WHO al­so plans to test whether an ex­ist­ing Ebo­la vac­cine could pro­tect peo­ple against the virus af­ter stud­ies in an­i­mals showed promis­ing re­sults.

The ori­gins of the out­break are be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly clear.

A study pub­lished in Na­ture Med­i­cine on Mon­day added ev­i­dence that the out­break be­gan when the virus jumped from an in­fect­ed an­i­mal to a per­son, rather than stem­ming from ear­li­er out­breaks. Re­searchers found the virus is ge­net­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from ver­sions seen in Bundibu­gyo Ebo­la out­breaks in 2007 and 2012. —(AP)

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Sto­ry by STE­FANIE DAZIO and MARK BANCHERE­AU | The As­so­ci­at­ed Press
Ste­fanie Dazio re­port­ed from Berlin, Ger­many. Mark Banchere­au re­port­ed from Dakar, Sene­gal. As­so­ci­at­ed Press writer Mike Sto­bbe in New York con­tributed.