Beni (DR Congo) (AFP)

A Congolese health worker, yet vaccinated against Ebola virus disease, has been infected with the hemorrhagic fever virus in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, health officials said on Tuesday.

The health worker was infected in Beni, one of the epicenters of the epidemic declared on August 1, 2018, according to the daily bulletin of the health authorities.

A total of 167 health workers contacted the disease and 41 have died, the source added. Ebola has killed a total of 2,237 people since the outbreak was declared.

The agent had received a dose of the first vaccine used since August 2018, rVSV-ZEBOV manufactured by the American group Merck Sharp and Dohme.

"It takes 8-10 days for it to produce antibodies to be effective," health officials said, adding that contamination is possible during this time.

Some 270,138 people have been vaccinated with this molecule. Others, numbering 6,317, were vaccinated with a second vaccine, introduced in October 2019 as a preventive measure in areas where the virus is absent. This vaccine, produced by the company Janssen Pharmaceuticals for the company Johnson & Johnson, is administered in two doses at 56 days apart.

In addition to the health worker, another confirmed case was registered in Beni on January 20.

"Ebola is not resurfacing here in Beni. The cases we see here in Beni are imported from Ituri. Once the outbreak in Ituri is under control, there will be no more cases here in Beni," said Friday on Congolese leader in the anti-Ebola response, Doctor Jean-Jacques Muyembe.

Disease response activities are regularly disrupted due to insecurity due to armed violence in Ituri, where armed groups operate.

Three people died in late November in an attack by Ebola teams in the region.

The current Ebola epidemic is the tenth on Congolese soil since 1976 and the second most serious in history after the one that killed some 11,000 people in West Africa in 2014.

It was declared a "public health emergency of international concern" by the World Health Organization (WHO) in late July.

© 2020 AFP