Kinshasa : The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has risen to 2,905, including 1,269 deaths, after health authorities reviewed data from two of the regions worst affected by the disease, adding more than 300 new cases to the official total.
The daily report issued by the Congo’s Public Health Institute said the increase was largely due to the reconciliation of data from Ituri and North Kivu provinces with the national records.
Health authorities had earlier this week announced that the number of confirmed Ebola deaths had passed 1,000.
The World Health Organisation said the true scale of the outbreak could be between two and four times greater than the official figures suggest.
The outbreak, which was declared in mid-May, is the Congo’s 17th Ebola outbreak, although experts believe the virus began spreading several weeks before it was officially announced.
The current outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus, which has a fatality rate of about 40%. There is still no approved vaccine.
