Ebola outbreak outpaces response in Congo, WHO says

What happened

• Congo's 17th Ebola outbreak began in the east on 15 May; on 1 August the WHO called it the country's largest.
• The WHO counts more than 3,700 cases and around 1,600 deaths; vaccine expert Richard Hatchett cites 3,748 infections and 1,657 deaths.
• Hatchett says more than 50 deaths were reported on a single day recently, with the case fatality rate around 40 percent.
• In Kinshasa, Tedros met health officials and humanitarian organisations, who agreed the response must be scaled up urgently.
• Agreed priorities: wider access to care, better epidemiological surveillance, protection of health workers, safe burials.

The view from outside

TASS keeps to the WHO statement and the Telegraph teaser to the doubling figure, while FAZ follows the vaccine track in an interview with Hatchett and flags the transport hub Kisangani as a new risk. Hatchett also contrasts the outbreak with the 2018 to 2020 Zaire-strain epidemic in the same region, which lasted 22 months, produced about 3,480 cases and could be fought with the licensed vaccine Ervebo.

What could happen next

• First field trials of the Oxford vaccine ChAdOx1 BDBV and a Moderna candidate are hoped for autumn, possibly late September or early October.
• Deployment strategy is undecided: vaccinating contacts to build buffer zones, or targeted vaccination of whole communities.
• Hatchett rates the risk of geographic spread as very high because Kisangani is far better connected than the remote east.
• Many transmission chains go undetected and people die at home unregistered, so official counts may understate the outbreak.