No Ebola cases found on quarantined riverboat, DRC authorities say
No cases of Ebola have been detected among passengers on a riverboat that was placed in quarantine near Kinshasa, health authorities have said.
The confirmation announced on Saturday eased concerns that the rare Bundibugyo virus might spread to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) capital.
More than 200 boat passengers were placed in quarantine on Thursday in the port of Maluku, 65km from Kinshasa, after one traveller who was previously aboard the boat died with symptoms matching the Ebola virus.
Congolese health authorities screened more than 300 passengers traveling on a river boat near Kinshasa after the death of a passenger suspected of having Ebola raised concerns that the virus may have spread on board https://t.co/EIooPVtIeg pic.twitter.com/reI5OQoQas
Specialist teams from the ministry of health were deployed to Maluku to examine all of those on board. Those exhibiting suspicious symptoms had samples taken and sent to a laboratory for analysis, the ministry said on Saturday, adding that the vessel was also decontaminated.
The National Institute of Biomedical Research, which is responsible for testing, said all suspected cases tested negative for Bundibugyo. It urged the population of Kinshasa to remain calm.
The DRC has been battling an Ebola outbreak that has been deemed the fastest in history in terms of transmission, with confirmed cases since it started in May reaching 4,200, including more than 1,900 deaths.
The riverboat passenger became sick and disembarked nearly three weeks ago in Pimu, in the province of Mongala, more than 1,000km from Kinshasa along the Congo River, Africa CDC director-general Jean Kaseya said on Thursday. The capital has no confirmed Ebola case, he added.
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 more than 11,000 deaths.
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Ebola is highly contagious and spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing.
Health authorities say between 60% and 70% of new cases in the current outbreak are recorded outside of contacts being monitored, and the outbreak is spreading at an “alarming” rate faster than efforts to track it.
The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said this week the outbreak is still “spreading at an alarming and unprecedented rate”, and the response, which has been expanding, “is still not reaching communities quickly enough to break transmission chains”.