(NEW YORK) — France has confirmed its first Ebola case linked to the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) as the United Nations warned that the outbreak is the fastest-growing in Africa’s history.
The patient in France is a humanitarian doctor who recently returned from the DRC and has been transferred to a specialist hospital, authorities confirmed.
French health officials said the case was detected quickly, the necessary precautions are in place and that there is no indication of local spread.
“France has specialized capabilities for managing highly transmissible infectious diseases,” France’s Ministry of Health said in a statement announcing the case. “Patients are treated in a designated healthcare facility, following strict biosafety protocols (negative pressure room, dedicated equipment and protocols). Health authorities are fully mobilized and the situation is being continuously monitored.”
“All precautionary measures, including the patient’s isolation, were taken upon his arrival in the country, with transfer to the hospital under secure conditions to prevent any risk of contamination,” the statement continued.
Officials said a thorough epidemiological investigation is underway to identify individuals who may have been in contact with the patient and that they will be contacted “without delay” by the regional health agency before undergoing 21 days of home isolation while being closely monitored the entire time.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said on Wednesday that the risk of infection is “low” for European residents and travelers to areas of active transmission, and “very low” for the general European population.
The development comes as U.N. officials warned on Tuesday that the Ebola outbreak in the DRC is spreading at an unprecedented pace.
As of Monday, there were 1,048 confirmed cases and 267 deaths, making it the largest number of confirmed Ebola cases recorded during the first month of an outbreak in Africa, according to Dr. Abdirahman Mahamud, director of heath and emergency alert and response operations at the World Health Organization.
Mahamud said it took just 37 days for the current outbreak to reach 250 deaths, compared to 78 days during the 2014 and 2016 West Africa outbreaks and 130 days during the 2018-2019 DRC outbreak.
Mahamud added that there are some signs the response has been scaled up to match the pace of the outbreak’s spread.
The number of beds available for treatment has risen in the last two weeks, “going from a handful to over 500 beds across 19 health zones,” he said.
Additionally, the U.N. said laboratory capacity has also increased from 30 tests a day in Kinshasa, the DRC’s capital, at the start of the outbreak to more than 2,000 tests per day through eight labs in the three provinces at the center of the outbreak.
Paolo Cravero, senior office of communications and media relations at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said there is “a lack of trust in the response” among affected communities and that the organization is “working hard with communities to bridge that gap.”
“Rumor and misinformation are creating some difficulties,” he said.
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