Uganda declared an official end to its Ebola outbreak, easing fears that the deadly virus would spread beyond the country’s borders.
“Uganda put a swift end to the Ebola outbreak by ramping up key control measures such as surveillance, contact tracing and infection, prevention and control,” the African country’s ministry of health and the World Health Organization said in a statement.
Widespread testing hasn’t detected new cases in more than 42 days, an indication that the virus is no longer spreading. The typical incubation period between exposure and infection is 21 days.
The outbreak resulted in a total of 164 cases, according to the WHO. Of those, 142 were confirmed by lab tests, and 39% of the people with confirmed infections died, the WHO said.
“While we expanded our efforts to put a strong response in place across the nine affected districts, the magic bullet has been our communities who understood the importance of doing what was needed to end the outbreak, and took action,” Uganda’s Minister of Health Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero said in a statement.
The epidemic was sparked by the Sudan strain of ebolavirus, one in a handful of pathogens known to cause the severe bleeding disease in humans. Other recent flare-ups in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were caused by a better-known strain called Zaire, which is commonly referred to simply as Ebola.
The country has dealt with four prior outbreaks of the Sudan ebolavirus, but this was the first to occur in a decade, the WHO Africa said.
“With no vaccines and therapeutics, this was one of the most challenging Ebola outbreaks in the past five years, but Uganda stayed the course and continuously fine-tuned its response,” Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO’s regional director for Africa, said in a statement.
There were fears the virus could spread to other countries with no vaccines or therapeutics to help lower its death toll. Uganda’s neighbors increased surveillance efforts at borders, but none identified any cases.
The U.S. will no longer screen air travelers from Uganda for Ebola, according to government officials who asked not to be named as a condition of being interviewed. About 11,000 travelers arriving in the U.S. were checked for symptoms of the disease since October, according to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House and the U.S. Agency for International Development.
U.S. health agencies stepped in to help when it became clear that there was a lack of tests, treatments and vaccines to respond to the Sudan strain, the officials said. The U.S. invested $33 million in supporting Uganda’s response to the outbreak, which helped to improve disease tracking and train health workers, the officials said.
The U.S. government also gave $7 million to neighboring countries for surveillance and diagnostics.
Three experimental vaccines were deployed to Uganda to help with the outbreak, but they ultimately weren’t needed because other control efforts had successfully stemmed spread, WHO’s Regional Office for Africa said in a statement. More than 5,000 vaccine doses arrived in Uganda in December, marking a milestone in the global capacity to respond to rapidly evolving outbreaks, the health organization said.
Uganda’s Ministry of Health, the WHO and other stakeholders will meet with Ebola vaccine manufacturers later this week to determine a path forward for trials, U.S. Ambassador to Uganda Natalie Brown said.
“As we prepare for the next outbreak, keeping in mind that pandemics like COVID-19 and HIV are still with us, I urge the global community to invest in long-term preparedness and continued coordination,” Brown said in a statement.
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(With assistance from Bruce Einhorn and Kelly Gilblom.)
