Two of three Ebola patients who escaped quarantine in the Congo river port city of Mbandaka have died, the head of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres’ (MSF) mission in the city said on Wednesday.
The third patient was found alive and is currently under observation by MSF and the World Health Organization, Henri Gray said.
On Tuesday, Congo’s health ministry announced six new confirmed Ebola cases and two new suspected cases as vaccinations entered the second day in an effort to contain the deadly virus in a city of more than one million.
There are now 28 confirmed Ebola cases in the country —, 21 probable ones and two suspected, the health ministry said.
The vaccine, provided by U.S. company Merck, is still in the test stages but it was effective toward the end of the Ebola epidemic that killed more than 11,300 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2014 to 2016.
A major challenge will be keeping the vaccines cold in this vast, impoverished, tropical country where infrastructure is poor.
— With files from the Associated Press