Ten thousand and sixty. That is how many confirmed Ebola cases Congo's health ministry has now counted since May, in government data released today. You're listening to Ebola Watch on Tuesday, October 27th. Congo's milestone and an attack on health workers come first. After that, Nigeria's only patient leaves for Switzerland, and Kenya sends its first contacts home.
The Associated Press, reporting from Bunia in eastern Congo:
It is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history and nearly half of the 10,060 confirmed to have the virus have died, according to data from Congo’s Ministry of Health.
Nearly half. Give me an actual figure. The latest death count we can source is the ministry report released Monday, as carried by Xinhua: 9,964 confirmed cases and 4,841 deaths as of Saturday, October 24th, a case fatality rate of 48.6 percent. The footprint hasn't moved, 66 health zones in eight of the country's 26 provinces. On Sunday we gave you 9,816. Right, that was the ministry's figure as of Thursday the 22nd. These are all confirmed cases, nothing suspected folded in. AP calls this the deadliest outbreak in Congo's history, and Xinhua notes it is now the second largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, after West Africa in 2014 to 2016. And the attack? On Saturday, in Bafwasende in Tshopo province, a nurse was killed and another health worker seriously injured while responding to an Ebola alert, according to WHO. The UN-backed Radio Okapi, cited by the BBC, says the attackers accused them of contaminating water sources to spread the virus. Local health and administrative authorities rejected that as rumor and misinformation, Xinhua reports. Is this a one-off? No. Last month a politician in North Kivu was beaten to death after publicly backing response measures, and in August the Red Cross reported injured volunteers and a burned ambulance across 11 violent incidents in the outbreak's first 100 days. WHO's Africa director, Mohamed Yakub Janabi, said misinformation and fear must never fuel violence. Why should someone far from Tshopo care about one attack? Because tracing only works if responders can get in. Contact follow-up was already short of its 95 percent target. When teams can't work safely, contacts go unchecked. Ten thousand cases, and one rumor can still stop a response team cold.
From Nigeria's Tribune, quoting a statement from the Academy of Medical Sciences of Nigeria:
“The source case leaving the country does not reduce the risk among the 53 contacts, who include health workers and domestic staff,” the statement read. “Each person must complete 21 days of follow-up, and WHO requires 42 days without a new case before an outbreak can be declared over.”
Hold on. The patient left? Early Monday, October 26th, she was flown from Abuja to Switzerland with her husband, who has had no symptoms. Health Minister Muhammad Pate said on X that she was stable, conscious and communicating, then added that this does not mean she is not still infectious. So is Nigeria Ebola-free now, or not? It depends what you mean. WHO's Janabi said that with the evacuation, Nigeria currently has no Ebola cases. The Academy warns against declaring anything over. Zero active cases is one thing. Finishing the 42-day clock is another. And is it 53 contacts, or 52? Both numbers are circulating. The Academy says 53. Janabi, quoted by CBC, says Nigeria is following 52 other contacts. We haven't seen an explanation for the gap. What else is the Academy flagging? Delay, first. It counts 13 days between her first symptoms and testing, across more than one private facility. Africa CDC had estimated roughly 10 days undiagnosed. Then equity: a foreign national could be flown to a high-level isolation unit abroad, it says, while a Nigerian patient could not. And the sequencing that might show where she was infected? Not published, as far as we've seen. The Academy wants Nigeria to keep its share of specimens and sequence data, and CIDRAP reports Africa CDC is sending a team of scientists to Nigeria to investigate. We said we'd check on Kenya. On Monday, Kenya released its first 20 contacts after 21 days without symptoms, Director-General Patrick Amoth said, per Reuters via CBC. Another 98 remain in quarantine and are due out in four waves starting Tuesday, November 3rd. Kenya still counts nine cases and two deaths in one cluster. Twenty people home, one patient in Geneva, and the genome comparison still nowhere.
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Tomorrow, Wednesday, Africa CDC convenes African health ministers virtually, and we'll report what comes out of that meeting. Ebola Watch is a Lantern Podcast. Look after each other, and we'll see you tomorrow.