Kenya records second Ebola death, a 65-year-old contact; nine cases confirmed

Kenya's Ministry of Health said on 23 October that a 65-year-old woman being treated for Bundibugyo Ebola in Nairobi died that evening, the country's second Ebola death. Director General for Health Patrick Amoth announced it.

The woman was the third person confirmed with the disease in Kenya and a close family member of the first patient. She was in quarantine as a contact when she developed symptoms on 13 October, and was admitted to an infectious disease unit the same day, Capital FM reported on 24 October. She received supportive care but her condition worsened.

Kenya now has nine confirmed cases and two deaths. Seven patients are being treated at two isolation facilities. The ministry said all nine cases are linked to one cluster of known contacts and there is no evidence of community transmission.

The first patient, a Kenyan man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), travelled through Uganda and landed in Nairobi on 3 October. He tested positive and died on 5 October, and the ministry announced the case on 6 October. The ninth case was confirmed on 20 October, when a contact tested positive in quarantine, the Associated Press reported. The nine are the first patient, four of his relatives and four health workers.

On 20 October the ministry said 135 contacts had been identified, 134 of them in quarantine. The first group was due to finish the 21-day quarantine on 25 October, and those without symptoms would be allowed to go home. The ministry asked communities to welcome them back, saying they "pose no risk of infection".

Amoth said the woman's family "has been formally informed of this sad event", and asked the public and media to respect its privacy. She was buried under public health protocols adapted to the family's Muslim burial traditions. Trained teams in protective equipment handled the body, and the family and mourners were told to avoid direct contact.

No vaccine has been approved specifically against the Bundibugyo virus, which is behind the outbreak, Xinhua reported on 24 October. A Phase 2/3 trial of several candidate vaccines began on 23 October in Bunia, in the DRC's Ituri Province. As of 20 October the DRC had reported 9,704 confirmed cases and 4,687 deaths.

In Nigeria, Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare Muhammad Ali Pate said genomic tests show the virus in the country's first case "appears to be closely related to the case identified in the index case in Kenya", AFP reported on 24 October. Pate said there was no evidence of travel by the Kenyan index case that linked it to Nigeria. In a post on X he called the Nigerian case "highly similar" to the Kenyan one; Xinhua quoted him as saying the two differ by one mutation.

The Nigerian patient, confirmed in Abuja on 20 October, is the wife of a staff member at Switzerland's embassy in Abuja. She returned from Uganda on 3 October. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) had suggested she may have met Kenya's first patient at an airport, since both flew from Uganda that day. Switzerland's foreign ministry said she had not been to the DRC.

The ministry told the public not to touch or handle the bodies of people who died of suspected or confirmed Ebola. It listed fever, weakness, muscle pain, vomiting, diarrhoea and unexplained bleeding as reasons to seek care at once. The toll-free line is 719; the ministry also gave the USSD code *719# and WhatsApp number 0700 719 719.

A notice from the Chinese Embassy in Kenya to Chinese citizens, carried by Guangming Online on 19 October, was issued when Kenya had eight confirmed cases. It tells anyone who has been in an outbreak area, or flew with a suspected case, to follow Kenyan health authority guidance and monitor themselves for 21 days. Those with fever or other symptoms should go to a medical facility at once and say where they have been and what exposure they may have had. The embassy's consular line is +254-20-2711222; the Foreign Ministry's 24-hour lines are +86-10-12308 and +86-10-65612308.