(Bloomberg) -- Rwanda has declared its outbreak of the highly virulent Marburg disease over and closed its treatment center after the last patient was discharged about a week ago.
The country has been almost two weeks without a case and a month without a death, Rwandan Health Minister Sabin Nsanzimana told a briefing Thursday. The East African nation announced the presence of the illness on Sept. 27.
An official announcement by the World Health Organization of the outbreak’s end will only happen after 42 days without any new confirmed cases, the equivalent of two incubation periods.
Cave-dwelling bats, which were identified as the source, will be monitored more broadly across the country and not just in the area around the capital Kigali where a miner contracted the disease. Authorities have gathered more detail from the man, who recovered, although his spouse and newborn child died while being treated in hospital.
Rwanda’s fatality rate of about 23% was far below other regional outbreaks. With 51 recoveries from 66 cases, this was one of the largest incidents of Marburg.
Most of the deaths were in the first weeks and included health-care workers. Rapid isolation of people displaying symptoms of the illness, which can cause hemorrhagic fever, as well as rigorous contact tracing helped combat the outbreak. More than 200 people received an experimental vaccine for the Ebola-like infection in the three days since its rollout began.
While there is no approved cure for the disease, Rwanda has tried different therapeutics. Gilead Sciences Inc. also supplied remdesivir, an antiviral medication tested during the 2018 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for emergency use under compassionate-care conditions.
“We see this as an opportunity for us to expand our preparedness capabilities,” Nsanzimana said.
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