Five dead in newest Ebola outbreak in Congo according to UNICEF

The five dead people include a 15-year-old girl. The Democratic Republic of Congo has so far recorded nine cases.

In a statement, UNICEF said, “Four additional people who contracted the virus -- all contacts of the deceased and including the child of one of the fatal cases -- are being treated in an isolation unit at the Wangata Hospital in Mbandaka.”

“The deaths occurred between the 18th and 30th of May but they were only confirmed as Ebola-related yesterday.”

The Director-General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus tweeted on Monday that six cases had been reported in Mbandaka, in the country's northwest Equateur province.

This DR Congo’s 11^thoutbreak of the virus, which has a fatality rate of anywhere between 25% and 90%, depending on the outbreak.

DR Congo was about to declare an end to the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record in April when a new chain of infections was found.

More than 2,000 people have died from the disease since August 2018.

The country is also struggling with coronavirus and measles. DR Congo has recorded over 3000 cases of coronavirus. About 370,000 people have contracted measles with 6,779 since 2019.

The largest epidemic of Ebola so far was in 2014-2016 in the West African countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. More than 28,000 people were infected in that epidemic and more than 11,000 of them died.