GENEVA: The Ebola outbreak in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo is spreading into new areas, the World Health Organization warned on Friday.
Much more needs to be done to get on top of the virus, the WHO said, with isolation bed capacity far below anticipated needs given its spread.
Since the outbreak was declared on May 15, there have been 676 confirmed Ebola cases, including 136 deaths in the DRC, according to the latest figures from the WHO.
There are a further 119 suspected cases, while 32 patients have recovered.
No approved vaccines or treatments exist for the rare Bundibugyo species of the virus responsible for the current outbreak, which is centered on Ituri province, with cases also detected in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.
“The outbreak continues to expand both in terms of case numbers but also in terms of geographic spread,” said Olivier le Polain, the WHO’s head of epidemiology and analytics for response.
Speaking from Beni in North Kivu, he said that cases were being identified in new health zones across the three affected provinces almost daily.
“That reflects really the scale of this outbreak: a scale that is much bigger than what is being detected, and the high mobility of the population,” he said in Geneva.
Le Polain said that while in recent weeks, cases in new areas could be traced back to travel from hotspots, now “we also see local community spread in new areas.”
“There are still many blind spots in some areas that are high risk,” he added.
“The full scale of the outbreak is not yet clear, and we’ll get more clarity as surveillance improves.”
Le Polain said contact tracing was getting better but remained below ideal levels.
“We are now at just over 70 percent in terms of contacts that are being appropriately traced. That’s a huge improvement from where we were about a week or two ago, but it’s still too low to ensure appropriate control,” he said.
“There’s a lot more that needs to be done across the board: more supplies to ensure that we’ve got safe spaces to isolate patients. Surveillance can scale up, but if you don’t have any space to put your patients safely, it becomes very difficult,” he added.
He said that “compared to where the epidemiology is heading,” the current capacity of 250 isolation beds across the affected provinces would not be enough and would need to be scaled up “quite rapidly.”
Aid workers describe cramped conditions at the camps with poor hygiene facilities, with sometimes hundreds of people sharing a toilet and open defecation.
“We are all really worried that Ebola in these camps will spread extremely quickly and that there will be panic and people will flee all over, whether or not they’re contacts, whether or not they’re ill,” said Caitlin Brady, interim country director for the Danish Refugee Council in Congo.
The outbreak has also spread across the border into Uganda, which has recorded 19 confirmed cases, including two deaths.
The African Union’s health agency said that the situation in Uganda was “under control.”
