Two unrelated Ebola outbreaks have broken out in two countries that have been battling the worst of deadly viral diseases.
Guinea health officials on Sunday declared an Ebola outbreak in Gouéké in N’Zerekore province, which is located in the southeastern part of the country. Officials have so far linked seven people to the outbreak, including three deaths. Six people became ill with an Ebola-like illness after attending a funeral. Three of the cases were confirmed, and two of the six were killed.
The outbreak is the first time Ebola has been found in Guinea since 2016, when the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded ended. The outbreak, which runs from 2014 to 2016, counts more than 28,600 cases and more than 11,000 deaths. Guinea was one of the three countries hardest hit in the outbreak.
“It is very worrying to see the revival of Ebola in Guinea, a country that has suffered so much from the disease,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the regional director of the World Health Organization for Africa. “However, Guinea’s health teams are on the verge of locating the expertise and experience gained during the previous outbreak to quickly detect the virus and limit further infections.”
Meanwhile, officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo have confirmed four cases in North Kivu province, where the second largest Ebola outbreak ended in June 2020. The outbreak totaled nearly 3,500 cases and nearly 2,300 deaths. It is unclear whether the new cases were linked to the outbreak through a latent, persistent infection, or that it was a new ‘flood’ event of the virus moving from an unknown animal gas to humans.
In both current situations, health officials are acting and working to locate contacts, mobilize health resources and vaccinate suspected contacts.
“The outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo are completely unrelated, but we have the same challenges in both,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference on February 15. experience with Ebola and benefit from the experience … But both outbreaks are also in hard-to-reach, unsafe areas, with some distrust among outsiders. ”
Tedros noted that 43 people had been vaccinated in the DRC, including 20 people who had been vaccinated during the earlier outbreak.