Business · Ars Technica
Ebola outbreak now third largest recorded and "spreading rapidly"
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The Ebola outbreak erupting from the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to escalate wildly, with cases nearing 750, deaths reported at 177, and around 1,400 contacts now being traced, the World Health Organization reported in a press briefing Friday.
Key facts
- The Ebola outbreak erupting from the Ituri province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to escalate wildly, with cases nearing 750, deaths reported at 177, and around 1,400 contacts now
- My heart is breaking for those workers,” Megan Fotheringham, who was USAID’s deputy director of infectious diseases, including during the Ebola outbreak in Ituri between 2018 and 2020
- The Trump administration has also said it is funding the establishment of up to 50 treatment clinics in Ebola-affected regions of the DRC and Uganda
- But that is no longer the case given the Trump administration’s demolition of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), severe cuts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Summary
A revised WHO assessment has moved the risk level from “high” to “high” at the national level, while risk remains “high” at the regional level and “low” at the global level, Tedros added. WHO officials have acknowledged that a delay in detecting and responding to the outbreak enabled it to balloon, and that they are now racing to get ahead of the virus. WHO representative Dr. Anne Ancia spoke during today’s briefing from the DRC, saying that when officials got to the area, they found the virus was “already rampant and silently disseminating for a few weeks already.
“Now we are sprinting behind so that we can try to control this outbreak, and because it is still transmitting for the time being, yes, the number will keep rising for some time until we are able to put all the response operation in place,” she said.