Ebola: No new case in Goma says WHO

The World Health Organisation said it has vaccinated over 1,300 people who potentially came into contact with the Ebola virus in the Congolese city of Goma.

This, it said will help to contain what many feared would be a rapid spread in an urban centre.

A year-long Ebola outbreak in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo had killed at least 1,800, the second biggest toll ever, and efforts to contain the virus had been hobbled by militia violence and some local resistance to outside

Goma, a lakeside city of nearly 2 million people on the Rwandan border, had been on high alert over the past week after a gold miner with a large family contaminated several people before dying himself.

Ongoing vaccination activities had reached the majority (98%) of eligible contacts, and 1,314 contacts, contacts of contacts and frontline workers (had been) vaccinated to date, the WHO said in a statement last week.

No new confirmed cases had been reported in Goma since the WHO’s previous report on Aug. 2.

The use of an experimental Ebola vaccine, developed by Merck, had proven to be a key weapon against the hemorrhagic fever, although reaching contacts in rural areas beset by violence had proven difficult.

The vaccine’s success had been most obvious in cities where contacts could be easier to trace, helping avoid the widespread havoc seen in densely populated areas during a 2013-2016 outbreak in West Africa that killed over 11,000 people.

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