Kenya health officials have reported a new case of Ebola, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to eight.
All the cases appear to be linked to the original patient, a Kenyan man who had been living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and traveled to Nairobi. That man subsequently died on Oct. 5, according to authorities.
Officials said on Sunday that the latest confirmed case is a 49-year-old patient attendant who was already in quarantine.
The other six cases that have been detected are in isolation and there is currently no sign of community spread, according to Kenya’s Ministry of Health. The risk to the public remains low, it noted.
Over the weekend, the Office of the Director General for Health in Kenya issued a press release stating that of 130 contacts of the original patient who have been identified, 128 have been traced and are in quarantine.
“Intensive efforts are ongoing to trace and quarantine the two remaining contacts,” the press release said. “In addition, new cases among quarantined contacts are possible until their 21[-day] monitoring period ends.”
Aden Duale, Kenya’s cabinet secretary of health, said earlier this month that the patient who was Kenya’s first Ebola case had been living in the DRC for the last seven years.
The Ministry of Health told ABC News at the time that the patient was 40 years old and traveled from Buta, a city in the northwestern DRC.
Duale said the patient fell ill about a month ago and was treated in several hospitals while in the DRC. He traveled from the DRC to Kampala, the capital of neighboring Uganda, by road, then boarded a Jambo Jet flight, arriving in Kenya’s capital Nairobi on Saturday, Oct. 3.
Duale said the patient had symptoms including fever, chills, fatigue, weakness, muscle pain, sore throat and painful swallowing. Doctors collected a sample from the patient, which was positive for Ebola and specifically Bundibugyo virus, a rare variant of Ebola behind the current DRC outbreak for which there are no vaccines and no treatments.
The patient was given supportive treatment but died on Monday, Oct. 5, according to Duale.
Dr. Patrick Amoth, Kenya’s director general for health, said during the briefing that officials believe the patient knew he was ill and reached out to friends and relatives to transport him from the airport to the hospital directly.
In a press release on Monday, the humanitarian NGO International Rescue Committee (IRC) said it is ramping up its Ebola response in Kenya, partnering with the country’s Ministry of Health to support screenings at airports and border crossings, as well as provide personal protective equipment to clinics and hospitals.
‘Kenya has a chance to stay ahead of an Ebola outbreak in the country,” Irene Bosire, IRC deputy director of programs in Kenya, said in a statement. “We must act fast, stopping any potential spread here and at its source in eastern DRC.”
It comes as the nearby DRC continues to experience its worst Ebola outbreak on record. As of Oct. 12, 9,144 cases of Ebola and 4,410 deaths have been confirmed, according to the Congo Ministry of Health, with 899 patients in isolation or hospitalized.
The case fatality rate currently stands at 48.2% while contact tracing stands at 77.6%, an improvement from the earlier days of the outbreak.
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