Brazil investigates possible Ebola cases amid scramble to contain oubreak

The World Health Organization’s top doctor has traveled to the Ebola hot zone to help bring the unfolding crisis under control as suspected cases of the especially deadly strain of the disease top 1,100. Meanwhile, authorities in Brazil were looking into two suspected cases. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who travelled to the capital of the eastern province of Ituri in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the ground zero of the current outbreak this weekend, said those who contract the virus could survive the strain of the disease. “Even without vaccines or specific therapeutics, people can survive Ebola disease caused by the Bundibugyo virus if they receive timely healthcare and seek treatment as soon as symptoms appear,” he said in a post on X Monday after visiting a newly opened Ebola treatment facility in Bunia on Sunday. On Sunday, the WHO announced that four nurses who were being treated for Ebola have been discharged from a hospital in Bunia after recovering from the disease. A laboratory worker had also recovered earlier this week, the agency said, bringing the total number of people who have recovered from the virus in the DRC to five. In an op-ed in Financial Times on Sunday, Dr. Jean Kaseya, Director-General of The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said more than 1,100 suspected cases are being investigated in the DRC and neighboring Uganda as of May 30, with the two countries having reported 263 confirmed cases and 43 confirmed deaths. The WHO reported the same number of confirmed deaths Sunday, but said there were 291 confirmed cases between the DRC and Uganda. Those numbers stood at 128 confirmed cases and 17 deaths a week ago, according to the WHO tracker. “We must move at the speed of the epidemic,” Kaseya wrote in the op-ed, adding that “the risk of regional spread is already happening.” Health officials and medical workers are facing “persistent challenges” in containing the outbreak, a joint statement issued by the DRC government and the WHO said, including early detection and isolation of cases, contact tracing, and safe and dignified burials of the victims. Last month, the WHO declared the outbreak caused by the rare Bundibugyo version of the virus in the DRC and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern, although it does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency. The outbreak, the third-largest since Ebola was discovered half a century ago, is outpacing the global response, as doctors on the ground are playing catch-up, and fear and anger over the growing health crisis among local communities has at times turned violent. “Never before has an Ebola outbreak recorded so many cases so soon after its declaration,” Doctors without Borders (MSF) said in a statement Saturday. “Like everyone in the affected areas, MSF teams are witnessing a response that has not yet caught up to the rapid spread of the epidemic,” the statement said, as it called for more medical staff and testing on the ground. Meanwhile, health authorities thousands of miles away are probing whether the deadly strain had reached their shores. In Brazil, a man with a suspected case of Ebola in Sao Paulo tested positive for meningitis. Another suspected case emerged in Rio de Janeiro, where the patient tested positive for malaria, local health authorities said on Sunday. In neither case does the diagnosis rule out the possibility of Ebola, they said. In Italy, protocols for a suspected case of Ebola were triggered in Sardinia’s capital Cagliari for a man who had flown back from Congo on Saturday with some symptoms, but the health ministry said Monday that he had tested negative.