The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has recorded the highest number of confirmed cases in the first month of any Ebola outbreak in Africa, a senior World Health Organization official said on Tuesday.
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The country reported 1,048 confirmed infections and 267 deaths.
The WHO also said more than 25 Ebola cases, including 14 fatalities, have been confirmed in displacement camps in eastern Congo, as cited by Reuters.
A total of 100 people have recovered from the outbreak, which is centered in Ituri province, since it was declared on May 15, Congo's ministry of Hhealth said on Sunday.
The ministry added that at least 365 patients are currently hospitalized or being treated in isolation.
The outbreak, caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus for which no approved vaccine or specific treatment exists, has become the largest Ebola outbreak in Africa during its first month on record.
Health officials have acknowledged that the actual number of cases may be significantly higher and warned that the outbreak has yet to reach its peak.
Contact tracing remains a major challenge, with local authorities achieving only a 55 per cent coverage rate, according to the ministry of health.
“If you want to control an outbreak, especially Ebola outbreak, you must know the index case. We don’t have confidence on when this outbreak started,” the Africa centers for disease control and prevention director-general Jean Kaseya was quoted as saying by AP last week.
Officials have yet to identify the outbreak's index case and are still working to trace more than 35,000 people who were exposed to infected individuals as of last week, authorities said.
More than a month after the outbreak was declared, health officials believe the virus continues to outpace response efforts, with the full scale of the outbreak still unclear.
