Kenya Reports Second Ebola Death as WHO Starts Vaccine Trial in Congo
Kenya's health ministry said a 65-year-old woman who was quarantined as a close contact of the country's first case died Friday, bringing Kenya's confirmed cases to nine with two deaths. On the same day, the World Health Organization said the first participants in Congo received vaccine doses in a new trial aimed at the Bundibugyo strain behind the outbreak.
Kenya has recorded a second death from Ebola, the country’s health ministry said late Friday, as the outbreak that began in the Democratic Republic of Congo spread to a fourth African country and the World Health Organization started the first vaccine trial of the epidemic.
The woman who died was 65 and a close relative of the Kenyan man who died of Ebola earlier this month, according to the ministry. She developed symptoms while in quarantine. “This loss brings the number of deaths to two among the nine confirmed cases,” the ministry said, adding that the remaining seven patients are receiving care in two isolation facilities and that there is no evidence of community spread in the country.
Kenya’s first case was identified this month in a man who traveled from Congo to Nairobi and died at a Nairobi hospital on October 5. Since then, Kenyan authorities have traced 135 contacts, all of whom were placed in quarantine, according to Reuters.
The outbreak has now been reported in four countries across eastern, central and western Africa, the widest geographic spread of any Ebola outbreak on the continent, according to Reuters. Nigeria became the fourth country on Tuesday, when officials confirmed its first Ebola case in Abuja in a patient who had not traveled to Congo.
Vaccine trial begins in Bunia
On Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the first participants were vaccinated in Bunia, the capital of Congo’s Ituri province, under a trial called Tumaini, which means “hope” in Swahili.
The trial will test whether Ervebo, a vaccine approved against the more common Zaire strain of Ebola, offers any protection against the Bundibugyo strain behind the current outbreak. No vaccine or treatment approved for the Bundibugyo strain exists, according to the WHO.
Congo’s outbreak, declared in May, is the country’s worst on record, with more than 9,700 cases and more than 4,600 deaths reported, according to the WHO. The Tumaini trial uses one framework to test several vaccine candidates, and two vaccines designed for the Bundibugyo strain, one from the University of Oxford and one from Moderna, are expected to join it.
US travel advisory for Kenya
On Monday, the US State Department advised Americans to reconsider travel to Kenya and raised its travel advisory level for the country because of health risks, Reuters reported.
Ebola can cause fever, vomiting and diarrhea and, in severe cases, internal and external bleeding, according to Reuters. Only people with symptoms can transmit the virus.
Reporting based on coverage by Reuters and News Central.
