The death toll from Ebola rose to 19 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo as officials plan to test an experimental vaccine there that they hope will stave off more infections.
The World Health Organization has recorded 39 suspected cases of Ebola during the past five weeks, and healthcare workers are screening 400 more people who they believe may have been in contact with people who are infected. The Ebola virus spreads when people have direct contact with someone exhibiting signs of the virus, including diarrhea, vomiting and bleeding. Three healthcare workers were counted among the dead.
The experimental vaccine is set to be administered sometime between the end of this week or early next week, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO’s director-general.
“The vaccine is safe and efficacious and has already been tested,” he said.
LIVE: @DrTedros on the latest updates of the #Ebola response in #DRC https://t.co/rIoZcbckFA
— WHO (@WHO) May 14, 2018
The vaccine, manufactured by Merck, was studied in a 2015 trial involving 11,841 people in Guinea and was found to be “highly protective.”
Ghebreyesus said the current Ebola outbreak was the ninth in the Congo over several decades, since the virus was first found in the area during the 1970s. He reported that he had traveled to the area, and that it was difficult for aides to travel across the country by land and that they had to take a helicopter.
The WHO learned that Congo was facing an outbreak when two cases of Ebola were confirmed May 8 in a province that has a population of about 2.5 million people.
The largest outbreak of Ebola occurred from 2014 to 2016, killing more than 11,300 people in Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia, and also reaching the U.S.
