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The heartbreaking similarity of covid-19 to Ebola 1:16
(CNN) - Five people, including a 15-year-old girl, died of Ebola in a new outbreak of the virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said Monday.
Nine cases have been reported in total, UNICEF said.
"Four more people who contracted the virus - all contacts of the deceased and including one child as one of the fatal cases - are being treated in an isolation unit at Wangata Hospital in Mbandaka," UNICEF said in a statement.
"The deaths occurred between May 18 and 30, but yesterday it was only confirmed that they were related to Ebola."
The previous Monday, the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, tweeted the news that six cases had been reported in Mbandaka, in the Equateur province, in the northwest of the country. It is the country's eleventh outbreak of the life-threatening virus, which is transmitted by body fluids and has a mortality rate of between 25% and 90%, depending on the outbreak.
A new #Ebola outbreak detected in western #DRC, near Mbandaka, Équateur province. @MinSanteRDC you have identified 6 cases, of which 4 people have died. The country is also in final phase of battling Ebola in eastern DRC, # COVID19 & the world's largest measles outbreak.
- Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) June 1, 2020
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is still fighting to end an outbreak that started in 2018 in the eastern part of the country, in which 3,406 cases have been reported, with 2,243 deaths, according to the WHO. There has been no new case in the past 21 days in that outbreak. Because Ebola has an incubation period of 21 days, that suggests the outbreak may be under control, but the WHO waits for two full incubation periods, or 42 days, to make sure before determining that an outbreak has ended.
LOOK : The bleak similarity of the coronavirus and Ebola
"The announcement comes when a long, difficult and complex Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is in its final phase, while the country is also fighting covid-19 and the world's largest measles outbreak." WHO said in a statement.
The Central African country has reported 3,195 cases of coronavirus and 72 deaths. By far the worst epidemic affecting the Congo is measles, which has infected nearly 370,000 people and killed 6,779 since 2019.
The Ebola virus lives in bats and the WHO says new outbreaks can be expected in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The largest Ebola epidemic was by far in 2014-2016 in the countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea in West Africa. More than 28,000 people became infected in that epidemic and more than 11,000 died.
Ebola