Ebola death toll in DR Congo outbreak rises to more than 2,000, officials say

The Ebola outbreak, which has hit the DRC's conflict-plagued eastern and northeastern regions, was declared on 15 May but is thought to have already been spreading for several weeks. An Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has killed 2,011 people out of 4,381 confirmed cases of the virus, Congolese officials said on Tuesday. The latest toll puts it close behind the DRC's deadliest Ebola outbreak in 2018-2020 when nearly 2,300 people died out of 3,500 recorded cases. The Ebola outbreak, which has hit the DRC's conflict-plagued eastern and northeastern regions, was declared on 15 May but is thought to have already been spreading for several weeks. It is the DRC's 17th surge of the highly contagious disease and is already considered the largest in the country's history "and could well become the largest outbreak ever," Sania Nishtar, chief executive of the Gavi global vaccine alliance, said. The case fatality rate of the current outbreak is estimated by Congolese health authorities to be 45.9%. Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace response that’s been expanding across the five eastern provinces affected. Many health workers have gone on strike to protest lack of payment for their work since the outbreak was declared. On Friday, World Health Organisation (WHO) vaccine experts recommended a full-scale human trial of the only existing approved Ebola vaccine to see if it offered cross-protection against the strain of Ebola currently spreading in the DRC against which no specific vaccine currently exists. The Ervebo vaccine has proved safe and efficacious against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola virus and WHO experts said that early data, notably from animal trials, showed it may also give some protection against the rare Bundibugyo strain exploding in the DRC. Two potential Bundibugyo vaccines are in the early stages of clinical trials on humans, while a third is being worked on to bring it to that stage. The WHO regional director for Africa, Doctor Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a news conference that officials are "chasing the virus, the virus is ahead of us." Ebola is spread by contact with bodily fluids and causes a haemorrhagic fever. The first Ebola virus to be identified was in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now Congo.