Symbolic imageEbola deaths in eastern Congo pass 1,500 as treatment centres are torched
More than 1,500 people have died of Ebola in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in just over two months, according to official figures reported on Thursday. That makes it the second-deadliest outbreak on record and the fastest-killing ever documented. Arsonists have attacked at least a dozen treatment facilities as misinformation spreads.
What happened
Official data reported on Thursday, 30 July put the toll at 1,521 deaths from 3,442 recorded cases as of Tuesday, 28 July, a rise of roughly 50 percent in deaths within about a week. The outbreak in the east of the country has killed more than 1,500 people in just over two months, which makes it the second-deadliest on record and, by speed of killing, the fastest ever documented. The worst outbreak so far, in West Africa in 2014-2016, killed more than 11,000 people out of at least 28,000 cases, but over a far longer period. The virus involved is the Bundibugyo strain, for which no vaccine and no treatment are approved; the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global health emergency in May. The Telegraph reports that at least a dozen facilities have been attacked since Congo declared the outbreak, with arsonists setting treatment centres alight as false claims about the disease circulate. Ebola was first identified in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo and is passed on through bodily fluids such as blood or vomit.
What could happen next
The burnt clinics remove isolation capacity in exactly the areas where case numbers are climbing, and with no licensed vaccine or drug against the Bundibugyo strain, containment rests on contact tracing and isolating patients, both of which require communities to cooperate with responders. British scientists are developing a vaccine against this sub-strain using the technology behind the AstraZeneca Covid-19 shot, but nothing from that work is available in the field. The jump of about half in recorded deaths in a single week is the newest figure in the outbreak, and the next official update will show whether that pace holds. Whether responders can rebuild the destroyed centres, and under what protection, will shape the next weeks.