GENEVA (Reuters) – The World Health Organization has warned six countries to watch out for possible Ebola cases after new outbreaks in Guinea and the Democratic Republic of Congo, a spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
Guinea declared a new Ebola outbreak on Sunday, the first resurgence of the disease since the 2013-2016 outbreak, while the Democratic Republic of Congo reported a resurgence of the virus on February 7.
“We have already alerted the six countries around us, including, of course, Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are acting very fast to prepare and be ready and look for any potential infections,” said Margaret Harris of WHO at a briefing in Geneva. She did not specify the other countries.
Harris added that health officials identified about 300 Ebola contacts in the Congo outbreak and about 109 in Guinea.
Sequencing of genes from Ebola samples from Congo and Guinea to learn more about the origins of new outbreaks and to identify strains was underway, she said.
“We don’t know if this is due to the persistence of Ebola in the human population or if it is simply a change in the animal population, but the ongoing genetic sequencing will help with that information,” she said.
Reporting by Emma Farge and Emma Thomasson; Editing by Alison Williams