The World Health Organization (WHO) said in a statement Friday that it is raising its assessment of the public health risk from Democratic Republic of Congo's Ebola outbreak from “high” to "very high" at the national level.
WHO raised the regional risk to "high" from "moderate" and kept its assessment of the global risk at "low".
The measure came after a new case of Ebola was confirmed in one of three health zones in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people in the northwestern province of Equateur.
Mbandaka is located about 150 kilometers from the rural area of Bikoro, where the outbreak was detected earlier this month.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called it a concerning development.
The agency said it was deploying about 30 experts to conduct surveillance in the city. An initial batch of 4,000 experimental Ebola vaccines arrived Wednesday in the capital, Kinshasa.
A total of 44 confirmed, probable or suspected cases of Ebola have been reported since the outbreak was detected last week, including at least 23 deaths.
The worst Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified in 1974 occurred in 2017, when more than 11,000 people died in the West African nations of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
世界卫生组织星期五在一份声明中说，它把在刚果民主共和国爆发的埃博拉病毒对该国公众健康的风险从“高”提高到“非常高”的级别。
世卫组织把刚果所在的非洲区域的埃博拉风险级别从“中等”提高到”高“风险，而全球的“低”风险级别维持不变。
世卫组织发表声明之前，在刚果西北地区赤道省有100多万人口的城市姆班达卡确认了一例新的埃博拉病毒感染病例。
姆班达卡距离本月早些时候最先发现埃博拉病毒流行的比科罗农村地区大约150公里。
世卫组织总干事谭德塞博士（Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus）说这是一个令人关注的变化。
世卫组织表示向姆班达卡派遣了30位专家监测局势。第一批的4000支实验性埃博拉疫苗星期三运抵刚果首都金沙萨。
自从埃博拉病毒上星期在这一地区爆发以来，总共有44个核实、可能或疑似病例，其中23人死亡。
埃博拉病毒1974年被确认，世界上最严重的埃博拉病毒流行发生在2017年。在几内亚、利比里亚和塞拉利昂等西非国家有1万1000多人死于埃博拉病毒。