It has been reported that 80 people have died New Ebola outbreak in Congo in the eastern province of Ituri, authorities said, while health workers rushed on Saturday to intensify testing and contact tracing to detect the disease.
Officials first announced the disease on Friday, with 65 deaths and 246 suspected cases. Local people in Ituri’s capital, Bunia, say they fear for their lives as burials continue.
“Every day, people die … and this has been going on for about a week. In one day, we bury two, three or more people,” said Jean Marc Asimwe, a resident of Bunia.
Congo’s Minister of Health, Samuel-Roger Kamba said late Friday there were eight laboratory-confirmed cases, and among them four died.
Test results confirmed that it was Bundibugyo virus, a variant of the disease that was less prominent in previous outbreaks in the Congo. This is the seventeenth incident in Congo since Ebola first appeared in the country in 1976.
The Associated Press
Ebola it is highly contagious and can be acquired through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.
The Bundibugyo virus has been blamed for only two previous Ebola outbreaks, according to CBS News health reporter Dr. Céline Gounder. One, in Uganda in 2007, resulted in 55 cases. Another, in Congo in 2012, resulted in 57 cases. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for this type of Ebola, Gounder said, noting “medical experts seem very concerned about the possibility or ability to contain this.”
The case that is suspected to be a clue in the recent outbreak is a nurse who died at a hospital in Bunia, said Kamba. He said the case was adjourned to April 24.
He did not say whether the nurse’s samples had been tested, but he said the person had shown signs of Ebola.
A New York doctor who contracted Ebola and survived more than 10 years ago he told CBS News on Friday that he is “really concerned” about health workers treating Ebola patients. Medical workers “are very close to people when they are most infected,” said Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency room physician and professor of public health at Brown University.
The outbreak is spreading to neighboring Uganda
Uganda confirmed on Friday a case of Ebola that authorities say “originated” in Congo. This person died at the Kibuli Muslim Hospital in the capital of Uganda, Kampala, on May 14.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is concerned about the risk of spread due to the proximity of the affected areas in Uganda and South Sudan.
The medical aid group Doctors Without Borders said it was preparing for a “major response” and called the spread of the disease “very concerning,” according to Agence France-Presse.
The body of the patient who died in Kampala was returned to Congo and no other local case has been confirmed, said the Ministry of Health in Uganda.
Jorkim Jotham Pituwa via AP 
On Saturday, people were being checked at the entrance of the Kibuli Muslim Hospital.
Ismail Kigongo, who lives in Kampala, said the outbreak of the disease reminded him of the father he lost. during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’m really scared because I remember burying my father without looking at his body,” he said.
Kenya, a neighbor of Uganda, said on Saturday there was a “moderate risk of importing” the Ebola virus due to regional travel. The Kenyan government said it has established an Ebola preparedness team and has tightened surveillance at all points of entry.
Organizational challenges make it difficult to manage outbreaks
Congo often faces logistical challenges in bringing technology and resources to affected areas during disease outbreaks.
As Africa’s second largest country by area, the Congolese states are isolated and often conflict-ridden. Ituri, for example, is 620 kilometers from the country’s capital, Kinshasa, and is violence from positions supported by the Islamic State.
“What we know very well [is] that the country has experience, but the region where it happens is very volatile with the ongoing humanitarian situation and the number of people moving from South Sudan to Uganda and other parts,” said Dr. Abdi Rahman Mahamud, the World Health Organization’s director of emergency health and response operations, during a press conference on Friday.
The disease has so far been confirmed in three health centers in Ituri province, including the capital, Bunia, and the areas of Rwampara and Mongwalu, where the outbreak is concentrated.
Hajarah Nalwadda by AP 
Only 13 blood samples were tested at the National Institute of Biomedical Research; eight tested positive for the Bundibugyo strain. The remaining five could not be analyzed due to insufficient sample size, said the health minister.
In Bunia, the main town of Ituri, business and general activities in public areas appeared to be normal on Friday.
Resident Adeline Awekonimungu said she hopes the outbreak will end soon. “What I recommend is that the government take this issue seriously and take action in the hospitals so that this issue can be controlled,” he said.
Questions about the US response remain
The US has been the single largest foreign player in responding to Ebola outbreaks in the past, but experts are concerned about the Trump administration’s cuts US Agency for International Development again its withdrawal of the country from the WHO may contribute to such efforts.
Spencer said the US does not currently have the capacity to respond quickly to global outbreaks. He suggested to CBS News that there may be a connection between the USAID shutdown and the fact that the latest outbreak was not announced until Friday.
“Before the second Trump administration, USAID would be down,” Spencer said. “The CDC would have been sitting down when they heard, maybe even before a while, about the new outbreak of Ebola because we were in a group of countries. We built relationships before.”
Spencer also pointed to absences from the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response and other health facilities. However, he said the US could still deal with the outbreak.
Ebola is “not that big of a spread,” he said, and highlighted the United States’ response to a a deadly outbreak of a rare strain of hantavirus on a Dutch cruise ship.
“We’ve seen in the last few weeks with the isolation unit we have in Nebraska and the more than a dozen facilities we have in the US that can handle high-impact viruses like hantavirus and Ebola,” Spencer said. “These were all commitments that we made as a country, mainly and in part because of cases like mine a decade ago.”
