Congo Ebola cases pass 9,000 with 4,381 deaths as containment falters

Congo's Ebola outbreak is now the largest in the country's history and the second largest ever recorded anywhere, and the latest figures show the effort to contain it falling behind the virus.

The Health Ministry reported 9,066 confirmed cases and 4,381 deaths in figures released on Tuesday, a death toll equivalent to nearly half the confirmed cases, as of October 13. The latest report recorded 88 new confirmed cases and said community transmission remains a concern. Health officials say the confirmed count may be only a third of all cases, with many infections never detected. A large share of the recorded deaths are happening outside treatment centres, where the dead are harder to trace and traditional burials involving close contact with the body help the virus move to the next household.

The outbreak, declared on May 15, is caused by the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola, for which there is no approved vaccine and no approved specific treatment. It remains centred in Ituri province but has been confirmed in seven provinces in all, across 65 health zones, including North Kivu and South Kivu. Containment is being impaired by fighting between government forces and rebel groups, by disregard for health precautions and distrust of responders in affected communities, by intense population movement, and by shortages of medical supplies and treatment centres.

The regional risk is no longer theoretical. Kenya confirmed an imported case on October 5: a patient who had travelled from Congo through Uganda to Nairobi and died there, the first country since Uganda to record a case imported from this outbreak. Only the 2014 to 2016 West African epidemic, with more than 28,600 infections across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, was larger than what Congo is now carrying, and health workers warn the gap closes a little more with every weekly report.