🔶 Seven thousand people infected with Ebola in Congo; spread to the seventh province

According to the latest figures from the National Health Institute in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to date more than seven thousand people have been definitively confirmed as having been infected with Ebola during the outbreak in this country.

The outbreak has now also spread to the seventh province in this Central African country. Experts believe the actual number of people infected is much higher than the recorded figures.

In addition, only cases have been included in the statistics that were registered since the official announcement of the outbreak on May 15.

It is believed that this outbreak may have existed months earlier but had not been identified.

According to officials, of the 7,022 registered cases, 3,398 people have died. At present, 837 people are in quarantine or receiving treatment.

For the first time, an outbreak case was identified in the province of Sud-Ubangi in the northwestern part of the country.

This province is considered the seventh region affected by the disease. The outbreak initially began in the east of this second-largest country in Africa.

Despite the fact that these figures show the fastest recorded increase in cases in the Ebola outbreak so far, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has spoken of promising signs.

Yap Boum, a prominent infectious-disease expert, said that in several main outbreak hotspots in Ituri province in northeastern Congo, where the number of patients is very high, a slight reduction in the number of disease cases has been observed.

The speed of the increase in deaths has been reduced to a large extent; this is probably because more people are visiting treatment centers in the early stages of the illness.

However, the number of people who die outside treatment centers—in villages or in ordinary hospitals—remains very high.

Ebola fever is a life-threatening disease. The virus is transmitted through physical contact and contact with bodily fluids and causes severe fever with very high transmissibility, accompanied by diarrhea and bleeding.

Containing the current outbreak is especially difficult because, for a strain of the Ebola virus called Bundibugyo, no specific vaccine has been discovered to date and no specific treatment is available.