Ebola death toll rises as two Americans are flown to Europe for monitoring

The suspected death toll from the Ebola outbreak in central Africa rose again Wednesday, as a group of potentially exposed Americans were arriving in Europe for monitoring and the World Health Organization warned a vaccine was still months away.

There are now more than 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths from the virus, mostly in Congo, the head of the World Health Organization said at a news conference.

“We expect those numbers to keep increasing,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “We know that the scale of the epidemic in DRC is much larger,” Tedros said, using the acronym for Democratic Republic of Congo.

With two cases and one suspected death in neighboring Uganda, the WHO warned that although the risk of a global pandemic was very low, the threat for countries in the region was severe.

DRCONGO-HEALTH-VIRUS-EBOLA — Rebel soldiers provide security at the National Biomedical Research Institute, which is responsible for analyzing and handling suspected Ebola cases, in Goma on Tuesday.Jospin Mwisha / AFP via Getty Images

Battling this epidemic will be difficult because it is being caused by a rare strain of Ebola called Bundibugyo, which has no approved vaccine or treatment and a case-fatality rate of between 30% and 50%. The outbreak was also caught late, believed to have started “a couple of months ago,” Anaïs Legand, WHO technical officer for viral and haemorrhagic fevers, said Wednesday.

Furthermore it is centered in an area riven by recent conflict, with cases already detected in Congo’s rebel-held city of Goma, some 230 miles away from the epicenter.

Officials are still scarred by the memory of an outbreak that tore through West Africa between 2013 and 2016, killing more than 11,000 people.

TOPSHOT-DRCONGO-HEALTH-VIRUS-EBOLA — A health worker monitors visitors arriving at the National Biomedical Research Institute in Goma, on Tuesday.Jospin Mwisha / AFP via Getty Images

Although the most common form of Ebola, the Zaire strain, does have an approved vaccine, Bundibugyo has no such countermeasure. Asked about the timeline for developing one, a WHO expert indicated Wednesday this was months away at best.

Vasee Moorthy, the WHO’s senior science and strategy adviser, told the news conference that one vaccine candidate was 6-9 months away from being available for clinical trials.

Another, being developed by the University of Oxford and India’s Serum Institute, was having doses “manufactured as we speak,” he said.

But there was no data from animal testing to support these shots, and so while “it is possible that doses could be available for clinical trial” in 2-3 months, he added, “there is a lot of uncertainty about whether that is a promising candidate.”

Meanwhile, an American missionary who contracted the virus while treating patients in Congo has been admitted to a specialist hospital in Germany, that country’s health ministry told NBC News on Wednesday.

Dr. Peter Stafford, 39, is now at Berlin’s Charité hospital, where he is being treated in an isolation ward in the department of Infectious Diseases and Intensive Care Medicine, the ministry said. He had unknowingly operated on a patient with Ebola before the outbreak was detected, according to leaders of Serge, the Christian missionary group he works for.

Also flown to Germany were his wife, Rebekah Stafford, 38, who is also a doctor and treated the same patient, as well as their four young children, Serge said Wednesday.

Another physician, Patrick LaRochelle, 46, is thought to have been exposed through a second patient and is being flown from Congo to Bulovka Hospital, in the Czech capital Prague, according to Serge.

Neither LaRochelle nor any other members of Stafford’s family are showing symptoms, the group said.

Like its counterpart in Germany, the Czech ministry of health said it was receiving the American patient on the request of the U.S. government.

Asked if he was worried about the Ebola outbreak, Secretary of State Macro Rubio said Tuesday, “Of course we are.”

He pointed out the U.S. had already mobilized approximately $14 million in assistance and indicated the U.S. aid would be used to open up 50 clinics but did not provide further details.

“It’s a little tough to get to it, because it’s in a rural area” and “a war-torn country, unfortunately,” Rubio said. “We’ll have more to announce on that. We’re going to lean into it pretty heavy.”

The Trump administration has been criticized by former officials and independent experts for its decision to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, previously a cornerstone of the global Ebola response.

The State Department has denied as “false” the allegations that these cuts have hampered the Ebola response.

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