No new Ebola cases in Uganda for 42 days as Congo toll mounts

Uganda has gone 42 days without a new Ebola case, marking the end of the outbreak in the East African country, while the number of cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to rise, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.

A representative of the WHO’s Africa regional office said in Addis Ababa that two incubation cycles had passed without new infections, meeting the threshold for declaring the outbreak over in Uganda.

The WHO announced the Ebola outbreak in Congo and Uganda on May 15. Uganda recorded a total of 20 confirmed cases, all traced back to a patient from Congo, and two people died.

In Congo, the highly contagious infectious disease had likely been circulating undetected since February, with early cases mistakenly classified as malaria, according to the WHO.

The current outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo strain, which produces less distinctive symptoms than the more common Zaire strain.

In Congo, Ebola has now spread across six provinces of the central African country, with the focus in Ituri in the north-east, a province that borders Uganda.

According to the Institute of Public Health, there have been 5,713 confirmed cases since the outbreak was announced, and 2,744 people have died from the disease. Currently, 770 patients are being treated in treatment centres or held in isolation.