The World Health Organisation on Sunday said it has vaccinated more than 1,300 people who potentially came into contact with the Ebola virus in the Congolese city of Goma, reported Reuters. The announcement comes as a relief amid fears that the Ebola outbreak might spread rapidly in the urban center.
An ongoing Ebola outbreak, which surfaced in August 2018 in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has killed over 1,800. The efforts to contain the virus have been adversely affected by militia violence and some local resistance to outside interference.
Goma, which is home to nearly 2 million people, has been on high alert since last week after a gold miner with a large family contaminated several people before dying himself.
“Ongoing vaccination activities have reached the majority (98%) of eligible contacts, and 1,314 contacts, contacts of contacts and frontline workers (have been) vaccinated to date,” the WHO said in a statement last week.
Notably, Goma hasn’t reported any new confirmed Ebola case since the WHO’s previous report on Aug. 2.
The use of Merck’s Ebola vaccine has proven to be a key weapon against Ebola, although reaching contacts in rural areas beset by violence is still difficult. The vaccine’s success has been most obvious in cities where contacts can be easier to trace, helping avoid the widespread havoc recorded in densely populated areas during the 2013-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that killed over 11,000 people.
Last month, the WHO declared that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). It has been included in a rare category that includes the 2009 flu pandemic, the Zika epidemic of 2016, and the 2-year Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa before it ended in 2016.
