KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The Ebola outbreak in Congo, the world’s fastest-growing outbreak of the disease on record, has now spread to seven provinces in the African country, local authorities said. And it’s showing no signs of slowing down.
According to the governor of the northwestern province of Sud-Ubangi, Jean-Rene Galekwa Vundawe, Congo’s national research institute tested a sample and found traces of the Bundibugyo virus, the rare kind of Ebola that caused the current outbreak.
The statement, which was issued on Thursday and reported by local media outlets on Friday, said the sample was from the Bulu health district in Sud-Ubangi. It did not disclose other information about the source of the infection.
Local lawmaker and former health minister Jean-Jacques Mbungani said on X on Thursday a positive case was recorded in Gwaka, a town in Sud-Ubangi province. He said the patient was a 23-year-old man and has died.
Mbungani said in just three weeks the man had departed from South Kivu province — where confirmed Ebola cases have been reported — and then traveled to Rwanda and Uganda. He then traveled to Congo’s Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak.
He then traveled from the northeast of the country to the northwest through the provinces of Tshopo, Mongala and Sud-Ubangi, according to Mbungani.
Doctors and local authorities in Sud-Ubangi were alerted to a patient that had a fever and was vomiting blood, Mbungani told The Associated Press on Friday in a telephone interview, adding that the man had died on Tuesday. Samples were then taken after the patient had died and were sent to the national research institute.
“It worries me. … Our province borders Congo-Brazzaville and the Central African Republic. We fear it may spread regionally,” said Mbungani.
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The development makes Sud-Ubangi the seventh province affected by the outbreak — and the first in western Congo — a worrisome spread outward from what was previously concentrated in the country’s east. A case was detected in Kinshasa in May in a person who had traveled from eastern Congo, but the Congolese capital, more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) away from the epicenter, was not classified as an affected province.
As of Wednesday, 6,942 cases and 3,349 deaths have been reported, according to the latest government figures.
The World Health Organization has said the outbreak remains out of control and is on track to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, primarily in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
In recent weeks, new cases and deaths have declined in Ituri province, the outbreak’s epicenter, but risen sharply in neighboring North Kivu and Haut-Uele.
The outbreak is spreading under extremely difficult conditions for aid efforts, fueled by insecurity, displacement, a health workers’ strike and intense population movements. The situation is particularly concerning at displacement sites, where residents already live in extremely precarious conditions.
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Sud-Ubangi, which borders the Central African Republic, does not border any of the six provinces in eastern Congo where confirmed Ebola cases had previously been reported. They include Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, Tshopo and Bas-Uele.
WHO said last month there is a risk the outbreak could spread from Congo to the Central African Republic and South Sudan, which border the affected provinces.
Neighboring Uganda, which had reported 20 cases since May, declared itself free of Ebola in July.
Last month, Congo began vaccinating health and other front-line workers with the Ervebo vaccine that was effective in past Ebola outbreaks caused by a different, more common type of the virus called Zaire.
Clinical trials are underway to find a licensed vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus.
The vaccination trials started in Tshopo, Haut-Uele and Bas-Uele provinces, Placide Mbala Kingebeni, Africa CDC’s director for research, clinical trials and innovation, said Thursday. Vaccinations in Ituri are set to start next week, he added.
