A new virus?

Alarm over mysterious deaths in Congo

(Bild: AFP)

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, a mysterious disease has once again claimed dozens of lives in recent weeks. It was only last year that a deadly, mysterious disease caused alarm in the African country.

The outbreak follows a similar event in late 2024, which was dubbed "Disease X" before World Health Organization (WHO) experts identified it as a cocktail of several known acute respiratory illnesses complicated by malaria and malnutrition.

These new outbreaks could have similar causes, but it will probably take some time to determine the exact cause. However, it is also not impossible that a new, as yet unknown virus is responsible for the cases of illness, speculates Eric Liang Feigl-Ding, a US health scientist who is currently an epidemiologist and head of the Covid task force at the New England Complex Systems Institute, on X (see tweet below).

According to official figures, the outbreak has resulted in at least 60 deaths to date. Half of the samples have tested positive for malaria (which is endemic in Congo, note), but doctors do not believe malaria is responsible for the deaths. 

Bleeding noses, chills, fever ...
 So far, a total of 1096 cases and 60 deaths have been recorded. The patients suffered from fever, headache, chills, sweating, stiff neck, multiple joint pains, muscle pain, runny or bleeding nose, cough, vomiting and diarrhea.

Initial laboratory tests were negative for Ebola and Marburg virus disease. Further tests are to be carried out for meningitis. Food, water and environmental samples will also be analyzed to determine whether contamination could be present.

"Tests are never 100% accurate and it is likely that with increased testing we will be able to detect a pathogen in some of these samples," explains Michael Head, who is an epidemiologist at the University of Southampton in the UK.

Should a previously unknown pathogen be identified as the cause, the health authorities would have to step up measures to contain the spread of the disease and identify the method of transmission.

Crisis team sent to Équateu province
In response to the spike in mysterious cases, a national rapid response team, including WHO health experts, has been dispatched to Équateu province to take a closer look at the situation and determine if there is an unusual pattern.

The first victims were children who had eaten a bat and died within 48 hours, the WHO Africa office recently announced. It is unclear how the disease spreads and whether it is transmissible from person to person.

Only at the end of last year, there were more than 400 mysterious cases of the disease - known as "Disease X" - in a remote region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and more than 140 people died. In December 2024, the country's Ministry of Health reported that the authorities believed it was a severe form of malaria.

"The mystery has finally been solved", they announced, stating that it was severe malaria in the form of a respiratory disease. The malnutrition of the patients also played a role. Children were predominantly affected, especially under-fives.