A week after Kenya confirmed its first-ever Ebola infection, the country’s health ministry announced on Wednesday that a second man had contracted the virus.
A severe Ebola outbreak in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed 4,400 people. Cases tied to the outbreak, now the second largest on record, have also been reported in Uganda.
Kenya recorded its first case earlier this month when a man who arrived from Congo by air was diagnosed with Ebola. That man was met at the airport in the capital, Nairobi, by a relative and a friend and driven straight to a large private hospital. There he was quickly isolated, tested and treated. He died days later.
The second man was a “close family member” of the first, the ministry of health said in a statement on Wednesday. The second man was in quarantine before he developed symptoms and tested positive, the ministry said, giving no further details. The authorities have not named the patient.
Kenyan officials have said the country has the virus under control. Kenya has placed more than 100 people in quarantine since the first case was detected, the health ministry said. The second man developed fever, tiredness and joint pains on Tuesday while in isolation, the ministry said, adding that early detection would increase his chances of survival.
Because the man was quickly isolated, it is unlikely that he would have infected anyone else, the ministry said. “This is the response working as designed,” Dr. Patrick Amoth, a senior official in the ministry of health, said on social media.
Even so, the case is likely to raise alarm in Kenya and increase scrutiny of government Ebola surveillance measures.
Health experts say they fear that Ebola will continue to spread to other countries. They are particularly concerned about cross-border spread from Congo to South Sudan, because that country’s health system is one of the weakest in the region. They are also concerned about the potential spread of the virus to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.
Three people died of Ebola in Uganda, though the outbreak there was quickly contained and has been declared over by health officials.
Early in the outbreak, an American doctor involved in Ebola care was evacuated to Germany after testing positive. He recovered. France recorded a case in June, when a French doctor also treating patients in Congo returned home. He has since recovered. A health worker involved in the response was also medically evacuated to the Netherlands this month after testing positive.
Ebola is contentious in Kenya, particularly after accusations that President William Ruto bowed to U.S. interests by allowing an Ebola quarantine facility for Americans to be built at an air base in central Kenya.
Hundreds marched through town closest to the air base in June to protest the facility. At least three protesters were fatally shot, according to the Kenya Human Rights Commission. The police did not comment.
Ebola, unlike COVID-19, can only be transmitted once a patient becomes ill and can only be passed through direct contact with the bodily fluids of someone who is suffering symptoms, or through physical contact with a victim who has just died.
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