The government of the Democratic Republic of Congo has confirmed a new case of Ebola virus disease (EVD) in the east of the country, which health authorities have been investigating since last week, an official source said on Tuesday.
The sample taken from the sick person - a 46-year-old woman who died on August 15 in the health zone of Beni (North Kivu) - “was tested positive for EVD (…) in Beni and then confirmed in the laboratory of the 'INRB (National Institute for Biomedical Research) of Goma', capital of the province, said the Ministry of Health in a press release dated August 21 made public late Monday evening.
Contamination linked "to a strain of the 10th epidemic of 2018"
The "sequencing" also showed that this case was "linked to a strain of the 10th epidemic of 2018 and not to a new introduction of the virus", adds the text, ensuring that the teams "are already hard at work on the ground to carry out response activities”.
About 160 contact cases have been identified to date, the ministry said.
The regional office for Africa of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Saturday that an investigation was underway into this suspected case, registered less than two months after the official end of the 14th Ebola epidemic which occurred in the DRC since 1976, which had killed five people in the West in three months.
Ebola virus disease is often fatal, but vaccines and treatments now exist against this hemorrhagic fever, which is transmitted to humans by infected animals.
Human transmission is through body fluids, with the main symptoms of fever, vomiting, bleeding, diarrhea.
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