Panic in Kinshasa as nearly 200 boat passengers forced into quarantine after Ebola death | World | News

Panic erupted in a major capital city after a person died with symptoms matching the Ebola virus. Congolese health authorities monitored on Thursday passengers travelling on a boat stationed near Kinshasa. Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak since May, declared the fastest in history in terms of transmission, with confirmed cases reaching 4,000, including over 1,800 deaths, according to Dr Jean Kaseya, Director-General of Africa CDC.

The passenger had disembarked after getting sick in Pimu, in the province of Mongala, more than 621 miles from Kinshasa, Dr Kaseya said today, adding that the capital has no confirmed Ebola case. The boat had been travelling for nearly three weeks along the Congo River with nearly 200 passengers on board. They have been tested for Ebola and are in quarantine while awaiting their results. Dr Kaseya added: “We decided to do that even if some of them didn’t have symptoms because we want to make sure that we don’t miss anything.”

Ebola is highly contagious and spreads in the human population through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing.

News of the passenger’s death caused panic in Kinshasa, which is far from the eastern region hit by the outbreak, the second-largest outbreak on record, behind the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that recorded more than 28,000 cases, including over 11,000 deaths.

Authorities say 60-70% of new cases in the current outbreak are recorded outside of contacts being monitored, and that the outbreak is spreading at an “alarming” rate faster than efforts to track it.

This comes as the medical charity Doctors Without Borders said this week that the Ebola outbreak is still “spreading at an alarming and unprecedented rate” and that the response, which has been expanding, “is still not reaching communities quickly enough to break transmission chains.”

Government data shows 674 patients are currently in isolation, most of them in Ituri.

At least 75% of contacts are being traced after their exposure to patients, the data showed.

A bigger concern, though, according to officials, is that contact tracing has not been effective as most new cases are coming from sources not being monitored and from remote localities where rebel conflict and mining-related movements are limiting access.