The outbreak is believed to have killed 603 people, according to a bulletin posted by the Congolese Health Ministry. Health authorities in the African nation also revealed there have been nearly 1,000 cases of the deadly virus since the epidemic began last August. Ebola – which causes fever with severe vomiting and diarrhoea – can be transmitted through blood and other bodily fluids of people who have been infected. Around half of cases are fatal.
“Since the start of the epidemic, there have been 960 Ebola cases, including 895 confirmed and 65 probable. There have also been 603 deaths (538 confirmed and 65 probable), while 314 patients have made a full recovery,” the bulletin read.
The health ministry added that five deaths and nine new cases had been confirmed on Sunday, and that 172 “suspected” Ebola cases were currently being investigated.
A vaccination programme has so far inoculated “89,173 people” and “saved thousands of lives,” health officials stressed.
DR Congo is using German pharmaceutical company Merck’s experimental Ebola vaccine rVSV-ZEBOV to fight the virus.
The breakout is the second largest in history, after the 2014 West Africa Ebola epidemic that lasted for two years, infecting 28,000 and killing more than 11,300.
Ebola can be transmitted between humans through blood and other bodily fluids of people who have been infected, and by touching infected surfaces. It causes haemorrhagic fever with severe vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding – more than half of cases are fatal.
But the outbreak is now concentrated in two areas and could be over by September, the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) said last week, insisting that the country needs help tackling broader health issues.
Health workers move a patient to a hospital after he was cleared of having ebola (Image: JOHN WESSELS/AFP/Getty Images)
“We have averted a much larger outbreak,” WHO chief
