Congo Facing Ebola, COVID and Measles All at Once

June 3, 2020 — The United Nations Children’s Fund said Monday that five people have died of Ebola in a new outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), CNN reported Tuesday.

One of the dead was a 15-year-old girl and a total of nine cases have been reported.

“Four additional people who contracted the virus — all contacts of the deceased and including the child of one of the fatal cases — are being treated in an isolation unit at the Wangata Hospital in Mbandaka,” UNICEF said in a statement.

“The deaths occurred between the 18th and 30th of May but they were only confirmed as Ebola-related yesterday.”

It’s the DRC’s 11th outbreak of Ebola. The country is still coping with an outbreak that began in 2018 and killed more than 2,200, CNN said.

“The announcement comes as a long, difficult and complex Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is in its final phase, while the country also battles COVID-19 and the world’s largest measles outbreak,” the World Health Organization said in a statement.

The DRC has reported nearly 3,200 cases of coronavirus and 72 deaths and nearly 370,000 cases of measles with nearly 6,800 deaths since 2019, CNN reported.