France confirms first Ebola case

sky news - France has reported its first case of Ebola during the latest outbreak after a doctor returning from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) tested positive.

The doctor had returned from a humanitarian mission, the French healthy ministry said.

The patient is being ​isolated and ⁠authorities are contact tracing, ⁠the ministry said, adding that the risk for the general ‌European population was low.

The DRC's Ebola outbreak has had ​the largest number ​of confirmed cases within ⁠the first month of any episode ⁠of the disease, ​the World Health Organisation (WHO) ​said.

‌The number of ‌confirmed cases ​in the DRC has increased ​to 1,094, including 277 deaths, government ​data ⁠showed ⁠on Tuesday.

The outbreak is linked to the rare Bundibugyo strain of the virus. It was detected late and experts say the virus had already been circulating for months before it was officially ⁠declared on 15 May.

WHO's Abdirahman Mahamud told a press briefing in Geneva that part of the reason ​for the scale of the outbreak was that some early confirmed cases were in urban centres, such as Bunia and the mining town of Mongbwalu.

Several past outbreaks have first been identified in rural areas, often fading out quickly.

"What is important is we need to scale up and this outbreak is moving faster than us," he told ​reporters, after returning from Bunia last week.

The two previous biggest Ebola outbreaks were one in West Africa - in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - which killed 11,325 people between 2014 ​and 2016, and another in ⁠the Congo in 2018, which killed 2,299 people.