France confirmed its first Ebola case linked to the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Wednesday, the first case to be diagnosed outside the African continent.
The case comes as health officials monitor a worsening outbreak that has infected more than 1,000 people in the central African country.
What do we know about the case?
According to the French Health Ministry, the patient is a humanitarian aid doctor who recently returned from Congo.
“The patient boarded a commercial flight from Kinshasa with no symptoms, only experiencing a headache,” and his condition “worsened slightly during the flight” before receiving urgent care upon landing in Paris, the ministry said in a press release.
He was taken straight to hospital and kept in isolation after reaching France to prevent any risk of transmission.
The patient was said to have a “very low” viral load.
The ministry said the man’s condition was stable and officials were tracing his contacts. Those contacts are expected to remain in home quarantine for 21 days.
In early June, the World Health Organization’s European office said there were no active Ebola cases in the EU and no local transmission, while the overall risk was considered low.
An American doctor infected during the outbreak was first flown to Germany for treatment at Charite Hospital in Berlin and has since recovered.
What do we know about the Ebola outbreak?
The current outbreak has proven particularly difficult to control because there is no approved vaccine or specific treatment for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus.
The main approved Ebola treatments are for the Zaire Ebola strain, which historically has the highest mortality rate and was responsible for the devastating outbreak in West Africa in 2014–16, the largest Ebola epidemic to date.
Bundibugyo Ebola has generally seen a low mortality rate, around 30 to 50% in previous outbreaks.
Since the outbreak was declared in May, more than 1,000 confirmed cases have been reported in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. More than 260 people have been killed in three northeastern provinces, according to Kinshasa officials.
Ebola is a deadly viral disease that can be fatal, causing fever, vomiting, diarrhea, organ failure, and sometimes bleeding.
It is contagious but not highly contagious under casual circumstances because transmission usually requires direct contact with infected body fluids.
Edited by: Wesley Rahn