Ebola outbreak tops 10,000 cases

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has surpassed 10,000 cases, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control announced on Tuesday that it has deployed a team of experts to Nigeria — the fourth African country to register a case in this outbreak.

The ECDC team, led by the agency's senior expert in epidemic intelligence, will advise the EU delegation in Abuja and offer Nigerian authorities support with surveillance, contact tracing, infection prevention and preparedness. The deployment follows earlier missions: a team sent in May to support the Africa CDC, an exit-screening assessment at airports in Congo and Uganda, and experts sent to South Sudan in June.

The outbreak began in Congo in May and has since spread to Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria. Kenya reported its first Ebola case on 6 October, and as of Monday eight contacts of confirmed cases there had developed symptoms and tested positive, according to the United Nations. All eight were transferred to the Ebola treatment centre in Nairobi, while twenty further contacts were released from quarantine.

The ECDC's latest threat assessment puts the likelihood of Ebola infection among Europeans at very low, and the risk for those living in or travelling to affected areas of Kenya and Nigeria at low. The arithmetic behind those ratings is what the outbreak's trajectory now tests: the epicentre in Ituri remains the standing scandal, where the Ervebo vaccination campaign runs formally as a research study because the Bundibugyo variant has no approved vaccine — the local population is at once the trial cohort and the only line of defense.

The fatality rate in Congo approaches half of confirmed cases. The European apparatus mobilised its experts in force once the disease surfaced in a capital with international flight connections rather than when the toll climbed in the interior.