Congo Ebola Outbreak on Track to Surpass Deadliest in History

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday that the ongoing Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo is projected to surpass the 2014-2016 West African outbreak, which killed over 11,000 people.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated the current outbreak is moving faster than any previous one, with Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud, WHO’s director for health emergency alert and response operations, expecting the peak in six to twelve months. The outbreak, considered the fastest-growing in history, has claimed over 2,000 lives out of more than 4,300 cases.

Government data on Tuesday reported 4,449 cases and 2,061 deaths. The first 1,000 deaths occurred over nine weeks, while the second thousand took only three weeks. The outbreak was officially declared on May 15, but health authorities now say sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February. A study published in Nature Medicine on Monday identified a new variant of the Bundibugyo virus responsible for the outbreak, originating from an unknown animal source.

This Bundibugyo strain has no approved vaccines or treatments, unlike the Zaire strain of the 2014-2016 outbreak. The disease is spreading in a remote part of eastern Congo, near the borders with South Sudan, Uganda, and Rwanda, an area facing ongoing conflict, poor infrastructure, and ill-equipped health centers. Misinformation and community mistrust of outsiders have kept some people from seeking care, and health workers have gone on strike over lack of pay. The UN humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, warned the outbreak is doubling in size every 20 days.