With riots in the US, swarms of locusts consuming the food in Africa and India, and a global disease pandemic of COVID-19, what else could there be to make things a little worse? Not to worry, for Canadian CTV News by way of the Associated Press reports that a new ebola outbreak has just occurred in Congo where it has killed four people.
Health officials have confirmed a second Ebola outbreak in Congo, the World Health Organization said Monday, adding yet another health crisis for a country already battling COVID-19 and the world’s largest measles outbreak.
Congo also has yet to declare an official end to Ebola in its troubled east, where at least 2,243 people have died since an epidemic began there in August 2018.
Now Congolese health authorities have identified six cases including four fatalities in the north near Mbandaka, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
“This is a reminder that COVID-19 is not the only health threat people face,” he said in a statement.
Four other people were being held in isolation at a hospital in Mbandaka, UNICEF said.
The victims died May 18 but test results confirming Ebola only came back over the weekend, according to Congolese Health Minister Dr. Eteni Longondo. WHO said it already had teams on the ground.
This announcement marks the 11th time that Ebola has hit the province since the virus was first discovered in Congo in 1976. Just two years ago an outbreak killed 33 people before the disease was brought under control in a matter of months.
The latest cases turned up in Wangata health zone near the port city of Mbandaka, which is home to some 1.2 million.
Meanwhile, in the east health officials are still waiting to declare an official end to to the epidemic after nearly two years. The last known patient there was released in mid-May but the country now must go about another month without any new cases before a declaration can be made. (source)
In the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there is a scene where Sean Connery declares, after barely escaping death, “they don’t get any closer than that”, only to have a bomb fall right in front of them and barely miss them.
One cannot help but wonder what may come next.