WHO: new Ebola fever outbreak in DRC spreads faster than previous ones

The Ebola fever epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which broke out in mid-May, has already led to 796 deaths with more than 2 thousand confirmed cases in this country, said World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"This is the third-largest Ebola epidemic of all those ever recorded. Over the past month it has spread faster than any previous epidemic," Ghebreyesus told journalists in Geneva on Thursday.

"To date, 2,073 cases of the disease have been registered, including 796 deaths. For comparison: during the Ebola fever epidemic in the DRC in 2018, it took more than 10 months to reach the threshold of 2 thousand confirmed cases," the WHO head explained, whose words are cited by Le Figaro.

The publication recalls that that epidemic, the deadliest in the country, led to almost 2,300 deaths out of 3,500 registered cases in the period from 2018 to 2020.