Nigeria confirmed its first case of Bundibugyo ebolavirus, the Ebola species spreading in DR Congo, on 20 October: a woman who travelled from Uganda and fell ill on 7 October, four days after arriving, WHO said through UN News1. She sought care at a private health facility in Abuja on 11 October, and the laboratory confirmed the virus nine days later. She is in isolation, and 44 contacts are being monitored2.
The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC), the national public health agency, had said on 6 October that the country had no case, and had put the Federal Capital Territory, Lagos and eight other states on high-risk alert. The alert covered the city where she sought care, and nine days still passed. NCDC has not yet published its own release on the case.
She and Kenya's first patient both passed through Uganda in October, whose own outbreak WHO declared over on 26 August. Neither is established as infected there; Uganda was a route, not a known source.
In the Netherlands, a health worker from the DR Congo response has been in high-level isolation, a sealed ward for dangerous infections, at Leiden University Medical Center since 1 October, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reports3. Africa CDC will gather African health ministers online on 28 October, ahead of a heads-of-state summit under African Union chair Évariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi4.
