Ebola Outbreak in Congo Nears 1,000 Deaths as Contact Tracing Struggles to Keep Pace

The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been underway for just over two months, with daily case counts showing no signs of slowing, according to NPR's reporting. Health officials have not been able to get ahead of the virus, a benchmark epidemiologists consider essential to ending any outbreak — particularly one for which no approved vaccine exists.

Central to the response is contact tracing, the practice of identifying everyone who has come into contact with a known case, monitoring them for symptoms, and connecting them to care. Armand Sprecher, an infectious diseases physician with Doctors Without Borders, described the process to NPR: "We find a sick person and say, 'Who was in contact with that sick person? Who took care of them? Who did their laundry, who touched them?'" He said that when contact tracing is done well, "you've got a really good handle on the outbreak."

The current outbreak shows that handle has not been achieved. With more than 80% of new cases emerging outside of known contact lists, Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious disease physician at Boston University with prior Ebola response experience, told NPR, "It means that a lot more people have this disease than we think, and contact tracing is not keeping up." She said whole chains of transmission are likely occurring beyond the view of health officials before a severely ill or deceased person surfaces.