Kenya confirms second Ebola case, a relative of the first patient

Kenya has confirmed its second case of Ebola, a close family member of the man who brought the virus into the country a week ago and died in a Nairobi hospital.

The patient, a 39-year-old man, fell ill on Tuesday while he was already in quarantine, the Ministry of Health said in a statement on Wednesday. He developed fever, fatigue and joint pain and has been moved to a designated treatment centre. The ministry said it would share updates on his condition.

Kenya’s first patient was a Kenyan citizen living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He drove from Congo into Uganda, flew from Uganda to Nairobi and died two days after arriving. Health Minister Aden Duale said on 7 October that at least 57 of his contacts had been traced and 10 quarantined straight away. Screening has since been stepped up at border posts and at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.

How the man crossed three countries undetected has become a regional sore point. The border between Congo and Uganda has been closed since May because of the outbreak. Alan Kasujja, who heads the Ugandan government’s media centre, questioned how Kenya let him in through its airport. “Leave Uganda out of this conversation. We don’t have Ebola here,” he wrote on X. Kenya’s Director-General for Health, Patrick Amoth, has said officials from Kenya, Congo and Uganda will meet the Africa CDC to work out what went wrong.

The epidemic in Congo is the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, with more than 9,000 cases and over 4,000 deaths. Kenya is the fourth country to record a case linked to it. Uganda reported 20 cases and two deaths earlier this year before being declared free of the disease in August, and a doctor who returned to France from Congo in June tested positive without passing it on.

Ebola spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person, living or dead.