Kenya confirms four more Ebola cases, bringing total to seven

⁠Three health workers who ⁠treated the country’s first Ebola patient are among the latest confirmed cases.

The Kenyan government says four new patients have tested positive for the Ebola Bundibugyo virus, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the East African nation to seven.

Three of the new cases were among health workers who treated the country’s first patient, Kenya’s Ministry of Health said in a statement posted on X on Saturday.

The fourth case is a relative of that same patient, who died from the disease, it added.

The relative had been in quarantine since October 6, the ministry said.

This comes a day after Kenya confirmed three cases in the country. The patient identified on Friday was a “primary contact and a close relative of the first and second cases”, the Health Ministry said.

Kenya’s cases are linked to the Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has recorded more than 9,000 cases and more than 4,300 deaths since it was officially detected in May.

Kenya’s index patient died on October 5 after being ill in the DRC for a month and then flying to Nairobi on October 3. The cases are the first known infections ⁠passed on inside Kenya.

Of the first patient’s 130 contacts, the Health Ministry said 128, or 98.5 percent, had been quarantined – above the global benchmark of 85 percent to break the chain of transmission.

The ministry says it has traced and quarantined nearly all of the first patient’s contacts and there is no evidence that the virus is spreading in the community.

Kenya has reacted quickly by strengthening screening and establishing a hotline for anyone who suspects they may have been in contact with an Ebola patient, but some observers have questioned how the index patient managed to bypass health screenings upon returning to Kenya and make contact with so many people.

Ebola is highly contagious and spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, including blood and vomit, or through contact with contaminated materials and surfaces, such as bedding and clothing.

The dominant strain in this outbreak is the Bundibugyo strain, for which there are currently no vaccines or treatments. This has complicated efforts to control the spread of the disease.

Research is under way to develop one or more vaccines that work against the strain, and some of these vaccines are already in the early phases of testing in humans.