Ebola Passes Five Thousand Deaths, With No Vaccine for This Strain
More than 5,000 people have now died in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s deadliest Ebola outbreak, with more than 10,300 confirmed cases across eight of its 26 provinces. The epicentre is a conflict zone. There is no treatment or vaccine for the species responsible, though trials are under way.
This is the story our missed edition cost us, and it is the most serious thing in tonight’s brief. The outbreak was declared in May, became the country’s deadliest in August, and is by the United Nations’ count the seventeenth in Congolese history and the second largest anywhere. Just under half of those confirmed infected have died — a fatality rate of 48.6%. The epicentre remains Ituri province, a conflict zone, which is the single fact explaining why containment keeps failing: teams cannot reach what they cannot safely enter. The hardest element is biological. The species driving it is Bundibugyo, for which there is no licensed treatment and no vaccine, so the tools that ended earlier Congolese outbreaks are unavailable and trials are running inside an emergency. The director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control was blunt: “We want all countries to know that they are not safe if they don’t take appropriate measures.” Governments pledged $3bn and more than $2bn is outstanding. Responders are being attacked — a nurse killed last week, a politician beaten to death last month for promoting control measures.