A British doctor who tested positive for Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been flown back to the United Kingdom and is being treated at the Royal Free Hospital in north London, the BBC reported. The man, who has not been identified, landed at RAF Northolt and was taken to a specialist infectious-diseases unit. It is the first confirmed case of a UK national contracting Ebola in the most recent DRC outbreak, which has led to more than 5,000 deaths. Dr. Renu Bindra, deputy director of the All Hazards Public Health Response team at the UK Health Security Agency, said there are "well-established procedures for dealing with cases like this" and that the risk to the public remains low.
The doctor was brought to the UK on a medical evacuation flight as a joint effort by the UK and DRC governments and international health partners, the Department of Health said. A convoy of emergency vehicles, including police vans and ambulances, completed the transfer from the RAF base, with traffic stopped as it arrived at the hospital. He is being treated in a "highly specialised" isolation unit. The Royal Free successfully treated three health workers evacuated during the West Africa outbreak in 2014 and 2015. There have been only four confirmed Ebola cases in the UK before this one: a 1976 laboratory incident and three cases involving health workers from the West Africa outbreak. None of those cases resulted in a death.
The current DRC outbreak, which began in May, has grown into the second most deadly recorded, behind the West Africa epidemic of the 2010s, with more than 10,000 confirmed cases and a reported fatality rate of 48.6% at the end of last month. Cases have also been confirmed in Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda. Ebola can cause serious illness and death. Early symptoms include vomiting and diarrhoea, and it can progress to organ failure and internal bleeding. The virus spreads through contact with infected bodily fluids. This outbreak is fuelled by the Bundibugyo variant. There is no approved vaccine for that strain, but the World Health Organization said experts have recommended adding two new candidate vaccines — one from the University of Oxford and the Serum Institute of India, and another from Moderna — to an ongoing clinical trial once Congolese authorities approve them. It would be the first time jabs designed specifically against Bundibugyo are tested during an outbreak.
The verified UK news is a single evacuated patient in isolation, with officials saying the public risk is low, set against a large and deadly outbreak in central Africa. It is not a domestic outbreak, and it is not a claim that the new vaccines have already been proven to work.