#16,963
Over the weekend WHO AFRO announced that the DRC was Investigating a Suspected Case of Ebola In North Kivu and on Monday we learned that the virus had been sequenced and it was genetically linked to the 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the same region.
We have since learned that the patient - an HIV-positive woman on antiretroviral treatment - died on August 15th after 23 days of hospitalization, and was identified as being Ebola-positive only after her funeral.
It is currently unknown exactly how the virus resurfaced after nearly 2 years, but two possibilities include 1) the patient has previously been infected, and relapsed, or 2) the patient had (likely) sexual contact with someone who still carried low levels of the virus (see EID Journal: Ebola Virus Infection Associated with Transmission from Survivors).
You'll find excerpts from the WHO update below. Follow the link to read it in its entirety.
Ebola virus disease - Democratic Republic of the Congo
25 August 2022
Outbreak at a glance
On 21 August 2022, the Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that a new laboratory-confirmed case of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) had been detected in Beni health zone in the province of North Kivu. The case, a 46-year old woman who had co-morbidities, died on 15 August 2022 after being hospitalized for 23 days. Oropharyngeal secretion samples were taken after death on 15 August 2022 and tested positive for EVD. The body was buried before the EVD results were known. Field investigations are ongoing to identify hospital and community contacts. The last EVD outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo was in Equateur province and declared over on 4 July 2022.
Outbreak overview
On 21 August 2022, the Ministry of Health (MoH) of the Democratic Republic of the Congo announced that a new laboratory-confirmed case of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) had been detected in a 46-year-old woman living in the city of Beni, in the province of North Kivu.
The case was hospitalized and treated for 23 consecutive days—from 23 July to 15 August 2022—for symptoms thought to be related to her known co-morbidities, including cough, headache, polyarthralgia (joint pain), and physical asthenia (general fatigue). The patient died in hospital on 15 August 2022 and the body was returned to the family for burial. To date, there is no information on the Ebola vaccination status of the deceased case.
On 15 August 2022, a sample of the oropharyngeal secretions was taken from the body and tested positive by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) at the National Institute for Biomedical Research (INRB), Beni. For quality control purposes, the sample was then tested at the Rodolphe Mérieux INRB Laboratory in Goma, which confirmed the results by RT-PCR on 16 August 2022. The body was returned to the family prior to receiving the laboratory results and subsequently buried on 16 August 2022.
A total of 134 hospital contacts (60 health care personnel and 74 co-patients) have been identified. As of 24 August, nine family contacts have also been identified. There are ongoing investigations by response teams in the health facility where the patient was being treated, as well as in the community.
The sequencing carried out at the Rodolphe Mérieux Laboratory of INRB in Goma confirmed this case is genetically linked to the 2018-2020 outbreak in North Kivu, Ituri and South Kivu provinces (Ebola Zaire strain) and not a new spillover event. (For more information on this outbreak, please see the Disease Outbreak News published on 26 June 2020). Samples were also sent to INRB-Kinshasa for genomic sequencing.
(SNIP)
WHO risk assessment
Preliminary information indicates that the first case was hospitalized at the health facility for 23 days without being diagnosed with EVD and died before EVD was confirmed by the laboratory. There is a risk of spread of EVD in the Province, and infection among health workers and co-patients in the health facility where the case was admitted.
The current resurgence is not unexpected given that EVD is endemic in the country and Ebola virus is present in animal reservoirs in the region. The virus can persist in some bodily fluids of EVD survivors. In a limited number of cases, secondary transmissions resulting from exposure to body fluids of EVD survivors have been documented. Relapses in EVD survivors have been reported. Moreover, the frequent detection of outbreaks in recent years can also be explained by new developments in Ebola control, such as the use of GeneXpert machines, as well as the strengthening of surveillance and detection following successive epidemics and the scaling up of Integrated Disease Surveillance and Response (IDSR).
The re-emergence of EVD is a major public health concern in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and there are still gaps in the country's capacity to recover, prepare and respond to outbreaks.
The Beni area is also affected by insecurity from armed groups. There have been more frequent protests against the security measures put in place by the authorities and against the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), which further increases the risk of refusal of outbreak control measures and therefore the possibility of spread of the disease. The concurrent outbreaks in the country (COVID-19, cholera, measles, polio, yellow fever, monkeypox, etc) as well as the protracted humanitarian situation in the province of North Kivu, have put increasing pressure on the health system and the available resources.
The risk at the national level is assessed as high. The risk at the regional and global levels is assessed as moderate and low, respectively. WHO is closely monitoring the situation and the risk assessment will be updated as new information becomes available.
