Congo National Laboratory Confirms New Ebola Virus Case After Five Months

Illustration of an Ebola patient care. (Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Bausch/Division of Viral and Rickettsial/Diseases, National Center for Infectious Diseases)

JAKARTA - An Ebola case has been confirmed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, according to an internal report on Friday from the national biomedical laboratory, five months after the end of the latest outbreak there.

Congo's health minister declined to confirm the information but said a statement would be published soon.

It was not immediately known whether the cases were linked to the 2018-20 outbreak that killed more than 2,200 people in eastern Congo, or an outbreak that killed six people this year.

A report from the biomedical laboratory, INRB, said the positive result came from a two-year-old boy in the densely populated neighborhood of Beni city, one of the epicenters of the 2018-2020 outbreak, the period of the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak.

Three of the baby's neighbors displayed symptoms consistent with last month's Ebola and later died, the report said, but none were tested for the virus, citing Reuters, October 9.

It's not uncommon for sporadic cases to occur after a major outbreak, health experts say. Virus particles can remain in the semen for months after recovery from infection.

To note, Congo has recorded 11 outbreaks since the disease, which causes severe vomiting and diarrhea and spreads through contact with bodily fluids, was discovered near the Ebola River in 1976.

The country's equatorial forests have become a breeding ground for the virus.