Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 2,325 people, government data showed on Sunday, surpassing the toll from the 2018-2020 outbreak to become the deadliest in the country’s history.
Congo’s public health institute said in its latest report that confirmed cases had risen to 4,945, including 101 new cases detected in the previous 24 hours.
The outbreak, Congo’s 17th, was already the biggest in the country’s history in terms of number of cases – a milestone reached in late July.
The latest government data shows that the total number of deaths has surpassed the 2,299 deaths recorded in Congo’s 2018-2020 outbreak, which was previously the country’s worst on record.
There are now 4,945 confirmed cases, the data showed.
Three months after it was formally announced, the outbreak is now dwarfed only by West Africa’s 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in which 28,616 cases and 11,310 deaths were recorded across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, according to the World Health Organization.
It took nearly five months from the declaration of that outbreak to hit 1,000 deaths, whereas Congo’s current outbreak hit 2,000 deaths in less than three months.
