KINSHASA, Sept. 3 — The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Thursday that it remains too early to declare the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) under control, despite signs of stabilization in recent weeks.
“We’re still early to say that we’re controlling the whole outbreak,” Wessam Mankoula, an Africa CDC official, told an online press briefing. According to the latest government situation report published Thursday, the DRC had recorded 6,250 confirmed cases and 3,039 deaths as of Sept. 1, with a case fatality rate of 48.6 percent.
A total of 1,439 patients have recovered. The outbreak has affected 60 health zones across six provinces. Four health zones have interrupted transmission after reporting no new cases for more than 42 days, while another five have gone between 21 and 42 days without a new case.
Transmission, however, remains active in 51 health zones, Mankoula said. “For the last two weeks, we are seeing a decline in the number of cases,” Mankoula said, cautioning that “it’s very early to say we have sustained decline in this outbreak.”
Mankoula also warned that more than 60 percent of deaths recorded over the past seven days occurred in communities, pointing to continued delays in detection and challenges in seeking medical care.
The current outbreak, declared in May, has since become the country’s largest and deadliest Ebola epidemic on record and the second-largest globally, behind the 2014-2016 epidemic in West Africa.(Namibia Daily News / Xinhua)
