The number of Ebola cases in an outbreak in central Africa has risen to more than 600, the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday, as it forecast there would be more.
Countries in the Middle East and Asia have begun taking precautions against the outbreak, although WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the risk outside Africa is low.
“The WHO assess the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels and low at the global level,” Dr Tedros said.
The organisation said there were 600 suspected cases of Ebola – up from 500 a day earlier – and 139 suspected deaths linked to the virus on Wednesday. It said numbers are expected to rise, because the virus was circulating before the outbreak in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo was detected.
Bahrain and Jordan on Tuesday announced travel bans on the two countries, with Bahrain's also banning South Sudan.
The UAE's Ministry of Health and Prevention said it was prepared “to respond to any health developments” but has not yet announced travel restrictions.
In Hong Kong, a Lantau Island isolation centre used for quarantine during the coronavirus pandemic has been inspected to ensure its readiness should a case of Ebola be detected. People arriving in mainland China from the affected regions will need to declare themselves to authorities if they show symptoms.
A WHO emergency committee met on Tuesday and confirmed the latest Ebola outbreak of the rare Bundibugyo strain was a public health emergency of international concern, but not a pandemic emergency, Dr Tedros said.
He declared the emergency at the weekend, and the first time a WHO chief had taken that step without first consulting experts. He said this was due to the urgency of the situation.
“Our absolute priority now is to identify all the existing chains of transmission … that will then enable us to really define the scale of the outbreak and be able to provide care,” Chikwe Ihekweazu, WHO emergencies chief, told the same press conference.
The outbreak has alarmed experts because it has been able to spread for weeks undetected across a densely populated area ravaged by widespread armed violence. A 2018 to 2020 outbreak of another Ebola in the region was the second deadliest on record, killing nearly 2,300 people.
The Bundibugyo strain, which spreads through direct contact with bodily fluids from infected people or animals, has an average fatality rate of around 40 per cent, according to the WHO.
Breaking down the figures in this outbreak, the WHO said 51 cases had been confirmed in Democratic Republic of Congo's northern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu. Uganda has also informed the WHO of two confirmed cases in the capital, Kampala, including one death among two individuals who travelled from Congo to Uganda.
WHO experts said that they suspected the outbreak was likely to have started a couple of months ago, with the first suspected death reported on April 20, but investigations continue.
Health officials believe after the first death there was then a super-spreading event either at a funeral or a health clinic. On May 5, a superspreader event was detected with a social media report of deaths in the communities, they said.
Dr Tedros said difficulty detecting the rare strain through testing, in a challenging conflict-affected environment, added to the complexity of the task. The early symptoms of the disease also resemble many other illnesses endemic in the region, such as malaria, he said.
There is currently no vaccine available for the Bundibugyo strain. WHO experts said that two possible vaccines are under consideration but could take between three and nine months to be developed and need clinical trials.
