No Ebola detected among quarantined boat passengers near Kinshasa

KINSHASA — No Ebola cases have been detected among more than 200 passengers quarantined aboard a river boat near Kinshasa, Congolese health authorities said Saturday.The passengers were placed in quarantine Thursday at the port of Maluku, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) from Kinshasa, after a traveler who had previously been aboard the vessel died with symptoms consistent with Ebola.Specialist teams from Congo’s Health Ministry were deployed to Maluku to examine everyone aboard the vessel. Samples were collected from passengers displaying suspicious symptoms and sent for laboratory analysis, while the boat was decontaminated.The National Institute of Biomedical Research said all suspected cases tested negative for the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola and urged Kinshasa residents to remain calm.The passenger whose death prompted the quarantine had fallen ill and disembarked nearly three weeks earlier in Pimu, in Mongala province, more than 1,000 kilometers from Kinshasa along the Congo River, Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said.No Ebola cases have been confirmed in Kinshasa.Congo is battling an Ebola outbreak that health authorities say is spreading at an exceptionally rapid pace. Since the outbreak began in May, confirmed cases have reached about 4,200, including more than 1,900 deaths.The outbreak is the second-largest recorded, behind the 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic, which recorded more than 28,000 cases and over 11,000 deaths.Health authorities say between 60% and 70% of new infections in the current outbreak are being detected among people who were not already identified as contacts, complicating efforts to trace and interrupt transmission.Doctors Without Borders warned this week that the outbreak was still “spreading at an alarming and unprecedented rate” and said the expanding response was not reaching affected communities quickly enough to break chains of transmission.Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or through contaminated materials and surfaces, including clothing and bedding.