More than 200 river boat passengers were placed in quarantine on Thursday in the port of Maluku, 65 kilometers from Kinshasa, after one traveler who had been aboard the boat died with symptoms matching the Ebola virus. The state moved fast. The people on board got sealed off while health authorities tried to contain fear around the Congolese capital, where officials said no Ebola case has been confirmed.
Who Gets Locked Down
No cases of Ebola have been detected among the passengers, health authorities said on Saturday, easing concerns that the rare Bundibugyo virus might spread to Kinshasa. But the quarantine itself tells the story. More than 200 people were held while specialist teams from the Ministry of Health were deployed to Maluku to examine everyone on board. Those showing suspicious symptoms had samples taken and sent to a laboratory for analysis, and the vessel was decontaminated, the ministry said.
The National Institute of Biomedical Research, which is responsible for testing, said all suspected cases tested negative for Bundibugyo. It urged the population of Kinshasa to remain calm. Calm, of course, is what institutions always ask for after they’ve already imposed control.
What the Authorities Say
Jean Kaseya, Africa CDC Director-General, said on Thursday that the river boat passenger had become sick and disembarked nearly three weeks ago in Pimu, in the province of Mongala, more than 1,000 kilometers from Kinshasa along the Congo River. He said the capital has no confirmed Ebola case. News of the passenger’s death caused panic in Kinshasa, which is far from the eastern region hit by the outbreak.
Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak that has been deemed the fastest in history in terms of transmission. Confirmed cases since it started in May have reached 4,200, including over 1,900 deaths. Those numbers sit like a warning over every official statement, every reassurance, every press release meant to steady a frightened public while the outbreak keeps moving.
What People Are Living Through
Ebola is highly contagious and spreads through contact with bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen, and with contaminated surfaces and materials such as bedding and clothing. Health authorities say between 60% and 70% of new cases in the current outbreak are recorded outside of contacts being monitored, and that the outbreak is spreading at an alarming rate faster than efforts to track it.
That gap matters. The machinery of surveillance and containment is already behind the virus, and the people outside the monitoring net are the ones left to absorb the risk. The medical charity Doctors Without Borders said this week that the outbreak is still spreading at an alarming and unprecedented rate and that the response, which has been expanding, is still not reaching communities quickly enough to break transmission chains.
The river boat case also sits inside a much larger disaster. Congo’s outbreak is the second-largest on record, behind the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that recorded more than 28,000 cases, including over 11,000 deaths. The current crisis has already produced panic in Kinshasa, even though the capital has no confirmed Ebola case, and the authorities’ answer has been quarantine, testing, decontamination, and appeals for calm.
The story was by Jean-Yves Kamale.