Ebola outbreak in DR Congo worsens, long transmission warned

The ongoing Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has spread to a sixth province, with confirmed cases rising to 4,727 and deaths to 2,214, according to the latest report released on Friday by the DRC's health authorities.

The report said the outbreak has affected 55 health zones across Bas-Uele, Haut-Uele, Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu and Tshopo provinces, with Ituri remaining the epicenter.

Buta health zone in Bas-Uele was newly affected.

Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) Director-General Jean Kaseya said on Thursday that one person had traveled from Isiro in neighboring Haut-Uele to Buta and later died there.

A total of 976 people have recovered since the start of the epidemic.

Health authorities warn that persistent community transmission and gaps in contact tracing could prolong what is already the world's second-largest Ebola epidemic on record.

Community transmission continues Kaseya said more than 63% of the Ebola deaths were currently occurring in communities rather than treatment centers or hospitals.

Community deaths further complicate response efforts because health authorities may not know who came into contact with infected people before or after death, making contact tracing and safe and dignified burials more difficult, he said.

The latest government report put the contact follow-up rate at 82.6%.

However, Africa CDC said the proportion of registered contacts being followed does not by itself reflect the effectiveness of contact tracing if many contacts are never identified in the first place.

The figures indicate that community-based surveillance and contact identification need to be strengthened, Kaseya said.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that a high proportion of deaths continued to occur in communities and that many new cases are being detected among people who are not on existing contact lists, indicating that some transmission chains had yet to be identified.

"It's moving faster than any previous Ebola outbreak," Tedros told a press briefing in Geneva.

"At its current pace, it's on track to eclipse the West African Ebola outbreak of 2014 to 2016." The 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, infected more than 28,600 people.