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An unidentified disease (“Disease X”) in the Democratic Republic of Congo has infected 376 people, killed 79 people (mostly children), and “appears to be airborne”. They hope to have an ID by the weekend. This seems bad?

Discussion  3 comments

Jason KottkeMOD

This piece calls the disease "respiratory in nature", which does not necessarily mean airborne. Stay tuned, I guess.

Andrew Lilja

Apparently it is significantly more challenging to collect and transport samples than they were anticipating, but there is a small update:

All severe cases were reported to be malnourished. There are 145 cases aged 15 and above, of which nine died (CFR: 6.2%). Deaths have primarily occurred in the village communities.

And:

The clinical presentation of patients includes symptoms such as fever (96.5%), cough (87.9%), fatigue (60.9%) and a running nose (57.8%). The main symptoms associated with death include difficulty in breathing, anaemia, and signs of acute malnutrition. Based on the current context of the affected area and the broad presentation of symptoms, a number of suspected diseases need to be ruled out through further investigations and laboratory testing. These include but are not limited to measles, influenza, acute pneumonia (respiratory tract infection), hemolytic uremic syndrome from E. coli, COVID-19, and malaria.

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