Nigeria says its Ebola patient's virus is 'highly similar' to Kenya's first case

Nigeria's Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Muhammad Ali Pate, said at a news conference in Abuja on the night of 23 October that genomic analysis shows the Ebola virus in Nigeria's only confirmed case is closely related to the virus from Kenya's first patient. In a post on X, he said the case “is highly similar to that from Kenya”, AFP reported.

The finding does not by itself show how the infection reached Nigeria, Pate said. In a statement from the Federal Ministry of Health and Social Welfare on 24 October, he said: “genetic relatedness between viruses does not, in itself, establish a direct transmission link between cases.”

The statement said the analysis was done by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) and the Institute of Genomics and Global Health at Redeemer's University in Ede, Osun State, led by Prof. Christian Happi. At the news conference Pate said: “That case appears to be closely related to the case identified in the index case in Kenya.” He added: “That is all that we can say at this stage based on the genomic analysis.”

The patient is a woman who lives in Abuja. She returned to Nigeria from Uganda on 3 October, and Nigeria announced the case on 20 October. Pate said: “We still have only one confirmed case.” Her contacts have been traced and quarantined, he said, and further tests on them are under way, “some of which are negative and others are pending”.

Kenya's first patient, a man, travelled from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) through Uganda and arrived in Nairobi on 3 October. He died shortly afterwards. Kenya's Ministry of Health said on 20 October that the country had nine confirmed cases and that 134 of 135 identified contacts had been traced and quarantined. On 23 October the ministry announced a second death: a 65-year-old woman who was a close relative and direct contact of the first patient, and Kenya's third confirmed case. The remaining seven patients are being treated in two isolation facilities. Dr Patrick Amoth, the ministry's Director General for Health, said all nine are linked to the first patient.

Both patients passed through Entebbe airport in Uganda on the same day, Kenya's The Star reported on 23 October. Dr Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response at the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), said investigators are looking at “some sort of interaction between the two cases at the airport”, which he called “one of the possible scenarios”, but he stressed that no link had been established.

Pate said: “There is no evidence of travel of that index case in Kenya that links it to Nigeria.” The finding “may or may not change our understanding of the route of transmission”, he said.

Uganda says the woman's travel through the country does not necessarily mean she was infected there. Switzerland's foreign ministry says she did not visit the DRC, which contradicts earlier Ugandan government reports.

Belgium's Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp supported the DRC's national biomedical research institute (INRB) in sequencing viruses from this outbreak. It says that comparing viral genomes from different patients lets researchers reconstruct transmission chains. It says genomes from the DRC and Uganda were related, which matched patients' travel histories.

The outbreak, caused by Bundibugyo virus, began in north-eastern DRC in May, and Nigeria is the fourth African country affected, after the DRC, Uganda and Kenya. Uganda recorded 20 confirmed cases, including two deaths, before declaring its outbreak over in August.

The NCDC said it would begin issuing short daily public updates from 24 October. Kenya's Ministry of Health said contacts who entered quarantine on 6 October and remain symptom-free were due to finish monitoring from 25 October.