The United Nations health agency said on Tuesday that a second suspected case of infection with the deadly Ebola virus had been detected in Côte d’Ivoire.
World Health Organization (WHO) spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said that as of Monday there had been one confirmed and one suspected case, with nine contacts identified so far. No deaths have been reported.
He said the WHO was “very concerned” about the ability of the virus to spread in the economic center of the West African country, Abidjan, with a population of over four million.
Ebola, which is transmitted through close contact with bodily fluids, causes severe fever and, in the worst case, unstoppable bleeding.
The confirmed case has been identified as an 18-year-old Guinean who traveled by land, arriving in Abidjan last Wednesday on a bus. When she left Guinea, she was already showing symptoms that kept getting worse.
She was admitted to hospital on Thursday with a fever and is currently receiving treatment.
“Preliminary investigations and genomic sequencing to identify the strain show that it is probably the Zaire strain of the virus,” Jasarevic told AFP. “Further investigations are needed to confirm these initial results. “
This strain was behind a four-month Ebola outbreak that claimed the lives of 12 people in Guinea earlier this year, which was declared over on June 19.
The same strain killed more than 11,300 people, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone between 2013 and 2016.
Bidding to “identify contacts”
Jasarevic said there was “no indication” that the case in Côte d’Ivoire was linked to the cases in Guinea.
Côte d’Ivoire began vaccinating high-risk populations within 48 hours of notification of the confirmed case.
Residents of the Deux Plateaux district of his Abidjan district were among those vaccinated.
“We know that the patient stayed here (in Deux Plateaux) before going to the hospital, so all the people around who are the contact cases had to be vaccinated,” said Ivorian Minister of Health Pierre Demba.
“We plan to reach 2,000 people in the next few days,” he added, including those who traveled with the infected young woman and those who have been in contact with these travelers.
The WHO vaccine doses positioned in Guinea have now been transferred to Côte d’Ivoire. There are now 5,000 doses in the country – 3,000 doses of a Johnson & Johnson vaccine and 2,000 doses of a Merck vaccine.
Experts use the so-called ring vaccination strategy, administering doses to people who have been in contact with a confirmed Ebola patient, as well as to first responders and health workers.
The Ebola case in Côte d’Ivoire is the third this year after the Democratic Republic of Congo and Guinea.
This is the first known case of Ebola in Côte d’Ivoire since 1994.
Regional health officials said they were working to locate people who may have come into contact with her in her home region in northern Guinea.
She traveled more than 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) by bus to reach Abidjan.
“Currently, all members of his family are with us in the isolation center,” local health director Mamadou Hady Diallo told AFP.
“We are continuing the investigations to identify the contacts,” he said.
(AFP)
.
