NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya confirmed four new cases of Ebola on Saturday, the health ministry said, bringing the total to seven in the country’s Bundibugyo outbreak.
Three of the new patients are health workers. They treated the first patient at a hospital on Oct. 3 and 4, according to the ministry, and had been in quarantine since Oct. 9. The fourth is a close male relative of that first patient, who died. He had been in quarantine since Oct. 6.
All four were already in quarantine when they got sick, the ministry said. Fever was the first symptom for each of them. Tests at the National Virology Reference Laboratory and the Kenya Medical Research Institute laboratory came back positive.
These are the first cases known to have been passed on inside Kenya. The first patient arrived from Congo on Oct. 3. He had been ill there for about a month, travelled by road to Uganda and then flew to Nairobi, the ministry said in its earlier account carried by Reuters. He died on Oct. 5.
Director General for Health Dr. Patrick Amoth said the early diagnosis helped. Because the four had been in quarantine, they were picked up early, limiting the risk to their families and to the wider community.
The second and third patients, confirmed earlier, are stable and responding well to supportive care, the ministry said. The new patients are also receiving supportive care at designated treatment sites.
Contact tracing is nearly complete. Of 130 listed contacts, 128 — 98.5% — have been traced and placed in quarantine, the ministry said. That is above the 85% level it described as needed to break transmission. Work to find the last two contacts is still going on.
“The risk to the general public remains low as there is no evidence of community transmission,”
Kenya’s cases are linked to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which Reuters described as the second-largest outbreak ever recorded, with more than 9,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths. There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the Bundibugyo strain.
The ministry cautioned that more cases could still appear among quarantined contacts before their 21-day monitoring period ends. People who develop symptoms will be identified and treated promptly, it said.
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