By Billy Stockwell

(CNN) — The chief of the World Health Organization said Tuesday he is “deeply concerned about the scale and speed” of the deadly Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda, as questions swirl over how the virus spread undetected for so long.

The outbreak, driven by the Bundibugyo virus, one of several viruses known as Orthoebolaviruses that can cause Ebola disease, is mainly hitting the DRC’s remote northeastern Ituri province, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

As of Tuesday, there have been 131 deaths linked to the outbreak, according to the DRC’s health minister, Dr. Samuel Roger Kamba, with more than 500 cases suspected. Ghebreyesus said 30 cases have so far been confirmed in Ituri province.

Meanwhile, in neighboring Uganda, two laboratory-confirmed cases have also been reported in the capital, Kampala, according to WHO.

As the humanitarian effort ramps up, concerns are mounting over why it took so long to identify and track the initial cases of the outbreak, particularly given the DRC’s experience in dealing with Ebola epidemics.

“I’ve been saying the most concerning thing to me has been how much we learned, how quickly we learned it,” Craig Spencer, a doctor who survived Ebola in 2014, told CNN on Monday. “There’s no doubt that this is probably much worse than what we think right now. I suspect the true case total is much higher than what’s being reported.”

In response to the growing epidemic, the US invoked a public health law on Monday to limit entry into the country from the affected region, just as one US national tested positive for the strain in the DRC. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) criticised the move, saying “broad travel bans can disrupt lives and economies.”

Ugandan authorities sought to reassure visitors on Tuesday, insisting there has been no local transmission within the country despite the two cases, which the Uganda Tourism Board said were involving Congolese nationals “who entered Uganda from the DRC.”

Later Tuesday, the State Department warned Americans against all travel to the DRC, South Sudan and Uganda, and to reconsider travel to Rwanda due to the outbreak in the region.

When did the epidemic start?

The first known suspected case was a health worker, whose symptoms started on April 24, according to WHO. The person later died at a medical centre in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province.

Then, on May 5, WHO received an alert about an “unknown illness” with high mortality in the province, the agency said. After an investigation by a “rapid response team” on May 13, the outbreak was confirmed as Bundibugyo virus on 15 May.

Jeremy Konyndyk, former lead for COVID and disaster relief at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said multiple “generations of transmission” must have gone undetected before the outbreak was confirmed, which he said was a “big, big problem.”

On Sunday, the UN health body declared the epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern,” and said the high positivity rate and increasing number of cases and deaths point toward “a potentially much larger outbreak.”

Ghebreyesus said this is the first time a director-general has declared an emergency of this kind before convening an emergency committee, which he said would be done later Tuesday. “I did not do this lightly,” he added.

Anne Ancia, WHO’s representative in the DRC, confirmed Tuesday the outbreak has also spread to the country’s North Kivu province, which directly borders Ituri province, but added there is still “significant uncertainty” about the true number of infections.

Ebola is a severe and often fatal disease that is spread through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, according to Africa CDC. It can also be spread through contact with contaminated materials or a person who has died from the disease. There are currently no approved treatments or vaccines specific to the Bundibugyo virus.

The-CNN-Wire
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