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WHO says Congo’s Ebola outbreak started months before it was declared
Sequencing and research suggest the virus was already active by January, and officials say more than 4,000 cases have been confirmed.
- Confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo reached 4,053, with the official death toll standing at 1,850, according to the latest government figures.
- World Health Organization regional director for Africa Mohamed Yakub Janabi reported the outbreak began in February, months before the May 15 official declaration, with early cases wrongly attributed to malaria and typhoid.
- Authorities confirmed the virus has spread across five provinces—Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uele, and Tshopo—making it the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak on record.
- "So we are chasing the virus, the virus is ahead of us," Janabi said, highlighting critical funding and staffing shortages that have overwhelmed surveillance efforts.
- The current crisis ranks as the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record, surpassed only by the 2014-2016 West African outbreak, which infected more than 28,000 people.
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Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said that virus sequencing indicated an earlier outbreak in February. He explained that early cases of Ebola were misclassified as typhoid, malaria, or typhoid fever. "So we're chasing the virus, it's outpacing us," he said. The WHO emphasized that the current epidemic is killing faster than previous ones, including the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa, considered the deadliest, which …
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Total News Sources77
Leaning Left26Leaning Right11Center24Last UpdatedBias Distribution43% Left
Bias Distribution
- 43% of the sources lean Left
43% Left
L 43%
C 39%
R 18%
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