The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will use $107 million in emergency funds to bolster the response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, US officials said Thursday.
The ongoing outbreak in the DRC is unfolding as Canada, Mexico and the United States co-host the Fifa World Cup, drawing international travelers from across the globe. Officials said the situation — now the third-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded — demands “strong immediate support,” while stressing that the overall global threat remains low.
“Specifically, and consistent with that modeling, we are now already approaching 1,000 confirmed cases across 31 health zones in DRC,” Dr Satish K Pillai, the CDC’s incident manager for the Ebola response, told reporters during a Thursday briefing. “There are 31 cases in Kampala, Uganda.”
Pillai said the CDC has deployed 23 field staff to assist with disease investigations, with a total of 125 personnel working across the DRC and Uganda. He added that CDC officials are holding calls twice a week with US World Cup host cities. So far, authorities said, local health systems have mostly dealt with health issues more commonly seen at major events such as the Super Bowl, including heat-related illnesses.
The current outbreak of Bundibugyo viral disease began about a month ago near the western border of the DRC and eastern Uganda. BVD is a rare zoonotic form of Ebola, a hemorrhagic fever, and has proved deadly in past outbreaks in Congo and Uganda, where fatality rates ranged from 30% to 50%.
Health officials in Africa have warned that, at the current pace of transmission, the outbreak could become the largest on record and may take a year to bring under control. The deadliest Ebola outbreak to date sickened more than 28,000 people and killed 11,000 between 2014 and 2016 in west Africa and eastern DRC. As of 15 June, the CDC said there were 837 confirmed cases in the DRC and 19 in Uganda, with 198 deaths reported across the two countries.
Although the risk within the DRC and Uganda is high, global risk is low. The disease is transmitted from person to person through direct contact with blood, bodily secretions and contaminated surfaces. This is in contrast to airborne diseases, such as Covid-19 and measles, which are considered far more contagious.
Despite low global risk, the US is one of 22 counties that imposed travel restrictions on people coming from these countries, which have been criticized as impeding the response to the outbreak. Efforts to contain the disease have been hampered by mistrust and shortages of personal protective equipment and vehicles to transport dead bodies.
Emergency funding from the CDC would add to the roughly $910m already pledged to combat the Ebola outbreak, less than 10% of which has been received from donors, according to African health leaders.
“CDC activities are focused on controlling the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, controlling the outbreak in Uganda and ensuring our domestic readiness to respond in the unlikely event of cases,” said Pillai.
