Ebola Death Toll Reaches 139... WHO Says "Infections Began Months Ago"

\r\n
[Financial News] The number of suspected Ebola virus disease cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda has reached about 600, with 139 deaths reported.
According to Reuters, Bloomberg and Agence France-Presse (AFP) on the 20th local time, senior officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) said at a press conference at the agency's headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, that infections may have begun a couple of months before the Bundibugyo variant was confirmed on the 15th.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Secretary-General of the World Health Organization, said, "Given how long the virus has been circulating before the outbreak was detected, we expect the number of cases to keep rising."
He added, however, that "the risk is high at the national and regional levels, while the global risk is low," and said it was "not a pandemic emergency." He also said the day before that "the scale and speed of this outbreak are deeply concerning."
Anais Legand, a WHO expert on epidemic hemorrhagic fever, explained that "the investigation is ongoing, including the timing of the first infections, and our top priority is to break the chain of transmission by tracing, isolating and treating all confirmed and suspected cases."
According to analysis by experts, including researchers at Imperial College London, the actual number of infections may already have exceeded 800 and could reach 1,000 in the worst-case scenario, Bloomberg reported.
This Ebola virus disease is the Bundibugyo variant, and there is no approved vaccine or treatment. Diagnostic tests to identify it are not widely used, and some have pointed out that the outbreak was identified late because authorities initially tested for a more common variant.
When asked by reporters in Washington, D.C. the previous day how the United States, which has withdrawn from the WHO, would respond to Ebola, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, "Of course, the CDC and the WHO will lead the response, but unfortunately, they identified this a little late."
In response to a related question on the same day, Tedros said, "What the minister said may have reflected a lack of understanding of how the International Health Regulations (IHR) work and what the responsibilities of the WHO and other agencies are."
rsunjun@fnnews.com Reporter Yoo Seon-jun Reporter