DR Congo Ebola passes 9,000 confirmed cases as WHO plans Bundibugyo vaccine trial

Case count and toll

The Congolese health ministry's latest report, with data collected up to 12 October and published on Tuesday, 13 October, records 9,066 confirmed Ebola infections and 4,381 deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo). The reported case fatality rate is 48.3%. According to the same report, 2,389 patients have recovered and another 895 are hospitalised or in isolation, while the contact follow-up rate stands at 79.5%. The outbreak was declared on 15 May. The figures are still rising, with 56 new cases recorded in Ituri and 28 in North Kivu in the 24 hours before the report.

Spread across provinces and borders

The epidemic affects health zones in seven of the country's 26 provinces: Ituri, North Kivu, Tshopo, Bas-Uélé, Haut-Uélé, South Kivu and South Ubangi. Reports give between 64 and 65 affected health zones, depending on the document. Ituri and North Kivu are the hardest-hit territories. The virus has also reached neighbouring Uganda, where WHO declared the end of the outbreak on 26 August after 20 confirmed cases, 15 of them imported from DR Congo, including two deaths. In early October, Kenya confirmed a case in a citizen who had arrived in Nairobi from DR Congo; the man died and his contacts were placed in quarantine. France and the Netherlands have each recorded one imported case linked to the epidemic, without declaring a new outbreak.

How it compares with earlier outbreaks

The outbreak is described as the second deadliest and most contagious Ebola epidemic in history globally. It has already surpassed the outbreak that hit the same region of DR Congo between 2018 and 2020, but it remains far from the West Africa epidemic of 2014 to 2016, which affected Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and infected more than 28,000 people and killed over 11,000, according to figures cited by Reuters. The Bundibugyo strain behind the current epidemic has no approved vaccines or specific treatments. Helpers are trying at least to slow the spread of the virus. The timeline below traces the key dates reported across the sources.

Vaccine trials and the response

WHO's Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) held its semi-annual meeting in the week of 5 October and announced a randomised clinical trial platform, called Tumaini, to test vaccines against the Bundibugyo strain. The platform would also test the existing vaccine for the Zaire strain. SAGE's independent experts concluded that immunogenicity results for the Zaire vaccine are not yet sufficient to assess the clinical protection it could give against Bundibugyo. Two candidate vaccines are in more advanced trial stages: one developed by the University of Oxford with the Serum Institute of India, and one from Moderna using messenger RNA technology, the same approach used in some COVID-19 vaccines. Trials of vaccines in humans have started, and they have shown no safety problems so far, though development could take several months. SAGE's president urged regulators to prepare so that there are no delays once the vaccines are approved. Insecurity and population displacement in DR Congo continue to hinder access to care, interrupt surveillance and delay the research needed to respond to the outbreak, and SAGE said it is very concerned about the high number of child deaths.