Two New Ebola Deaths Recorded in DRC Outbreak

The recent cases come just as Democratic Republic of Congo was set to declare the outbreak’s end.

Written byAmy Schleunes

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A new case of Ebola has been confirmed in Beni, a city in the North Kivu province of Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization announced on Friday (April 10). The 26-year-old man died from the infection in the first Ebola case to have emerged after 52 days without a diagnosis, reports STAT. DRC was expected to declare the end of the outbreak today, but the new diagnosis puts that declaration on hold.

“I am so sad,” WHO epidemiologist Marie-Roseline Darnycka Bélizaire tells Nature. “I expected a sporadic case earlier, but not two days before the end.”

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, stated during a briefing that the DRC government would not be able to “declare an end to the outbreak on Monday as was hoped,” but that “WHO and all partners remain on the ground and committed as ever ...

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Meet the Author

Amy Schleunes
A former intern at The Scientist, Amy studied neurobiology at Cornell University and later earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She is a Los Angeles–based writer, editor, and communications strategist who collaborates on nonfiction books for Harper Collins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and also teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University CTY. Her favorite projects involve sharing the insights of science and medicine.
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