WHO Director-General Says Number Of New Ebola Cases In DRC Down 50% Since January

The number of new Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is facing an ongoing outbreak of the disease, has gone down by half since January, Tedros Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said during a press conference on Thursday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 14th March, 2019) The number of new Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which is facing an ongoing outbreak of the disease, has gone down by half since January, Tedros Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said during a press conference on Thursday.

"There are half as many new cases per week now than there were in January. In January, there were 50 cases per week, now we have an average of 25 cases per week. So there is a decrease in the number of [new] cases," Ghebreyesus said.

He stressed that the response operation was now focusing on a smaller geographical area.

"The outbreak has been contained in 11 of the 28 communities that have had cases ... The cases are now shrinking to a further geographic area," Ghebreyesus said.

According to the most recent statistics on the outbreak in the African country, which started there last summer, there have been 927 confirmed and probable cases, and 584 deaths. The WHO has vaccinated more than 87,000 people.

The Ebola virus is transmitted to humans from wild animals and estimated by the WHO to have a 50 percent fatality rate. Ebola is named after the DRC's Ebola River, near which the virus was discovered by Belgian microbiologist Peter Piot and his team in 1976.