France on Wednesday confirmed its first Ebola case linked to the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first to be diagnosed outside the African continent.
The case comes as health authorities monitor a worsening outbreak that has infected more than 1,000 people in the central African country.
What do we know about the case?
The patient is a humanitarian aid doctor who recently returned from Congo, according to the French Health Ministry.
The patient “boarded a commercial flight from Kinshasa while virtually asymptomatic, experiencing only headaches,” and his condition “deteriorated slightly during the flight” before he received immediate care upon landing in Paris, the ministry stated in a press release.
He was taken directly to hospital and placed in isolation after arriving in France to prevent any risk of transmission.
The patient was said to have had a “very low” viral load.
The ministry said the man’s condition was stable and that officials were tracing people who had come into contact with him. Those contacts are expected to remain in home quarantine for 21 days.
In early June, the World Health Organization’s European office said there were no active Ebola cases in the European Union and no local transmission, while assessing the overall risk as low.
A US doctor infected during the outbreak had previously been flown to Germany for treatment at Berlin’s Charite hospital and has since recovered.
What do we know about the Ebola outbreak?
The current outbreak has proved particularly difficult to contain because there is no approved vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus.
The main approved Ebola treatments are for the Zaire Ebola strain, which has historically had the highest fatality rates and was responsible for the devastating 2014-16 West Africa outbreak, the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded.
Bundibugyo Ebola has generally shown lower fatality rates, about 30 to 50% in past outbreaks.
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Since the outbreak was announced in May, more than 1,000 confirmed cases have been recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. More than 260 people have died in three northeastern provinces, according to authorities in Kinshasa.
Ebola is a life-threatening viral disease that can be deadly, causing fever, vomiting, diarrhea, organ failure and sometimes bleeding.
It is infectious but not highly contagious in casual settings because transmission usually requires direct contact with infected body fluids.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn
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