The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued an alert to six African countries to check for potential Ebola cases after it emerged in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Guinea recently, reported Africa News.
The alert has been issued to Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.
“We have already alerted the six countries around, including of course Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are moving very fast to prepare and be ready and to look for any potential infection,” the WHO’s Margaret Harris said during a Geneva briefing.
The DRC declared the emergence of Ebola on February 7 while Guinea declared the outbreak on Sunday. Guinea has reported up to 10 suspected cases of Ebola and five deaths so far. The health ministry said it has identified 115 contacts of the known cases in the southeastern city of Nzerekore and 10 in the capital Conakry since declaring the outbreak on Sunday.
According to the WHO, gene sequencing of Ebola samples from both Congo and Guinea is being carried out to learn more about the origins of the outbreaks and identify the strains.
The DRC government has already confirmed that its latest cases are not linked to a new Ebola variant but represent a resurgence of its tenth outbreak, the second-largest on record that caused more than 2,200 deaths in 2018-2020.
More than 11,000 people died in the West Africa Ebola epidemic, which began in Guinea, between 2013 and 2016.
The Ebola virus spreads through contact with body fluids. It can lead to severe bleeding and organ failure and has a much higher death rate than Covid-19.
The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) on Tuesday informed that the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases on the African continent has crossed the 3,759,166 mark. The death toll related to the pandemic stood at 98,915.
