Italy activates Ebola surveillance protocol after hospitalizing two travelers with symptoms
The WHO raises the death toll of suspicious deaths to 220 and that of possible positives to more than 900
BarcelonaItaly activated the health surveillance protocol this Monday pthe Ebola outbreak declared in the Democratic Republic of CongoHowever, the Italian government has wanted to send a message of reassurance to the public. Through a statement, it assured that the national system for the prevention and response to infectious emergencies is "fully operational" and that the risk in the country "remains very low".
"The epidemic is overwhelming us"
The alert in Italy coincides with Uganda's confirmation of two new Ebola cases, bringing the total number of infections detected in the country to seven. Since May 15, when the outbreak was declared in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the scope and speed with which it has grown have caused so much concern that, for the first time in history, the WHO Director-General, Tedros Adhanom, has declared an international health emergency before convening an emergency committee to study the situation. international health emergency before convening an emergency committee to study the situation.
Adhanom himself raised the death toll of suspected deaths to 220 and suspected cases to over 900 this Monday. With these figures in hand, the WHO Director-General lamented that the virus's spread rate is outpacing efforts to curb it: "We are trying to catch up with an epidemic that is spreading very rapidly. We are urgently scaling up operations, but for now the epidemic is outrunning us," he acknowledged. From a meeting of the African Union, he called on neighboring countries to take measures.
The factors that suggest cases will continue to rise are diverse. On the one hand, Adhanom pointed to the brutality of the conflict in the provinces of Ituri and North Kivu, both in eastern DRC, which has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. On the other hand, the local population's distrust of foreign health authorities, coupled with a lack of approved vaccines and treatments for this variety, Bundibugyo, which has a fatality rate of between 30% and 50%.