Uganda says two new Ebola cases confirmed in Kampala hospital

Two more people in an isolation unit of Uganda’s main hospital have tested positive for Ebola, bringing total cases recorded in the facility to five, the health minister said on Sunday.

The five confirmed cases in Kampala are the first known transmission of the virus in the city, coming days after the information ministry said the country’s Ebola outbreak was coming under control and was expected to be over by the end of the year.

Health Minister Jane Ruth Aceng said on Saturday that three patients among 60 people in isolation at Kampala’s Mulago Hospital tested positive for the disease a day earlier.

She had said the three infected people had been in contact with a patient from Kassanda district in central Uganda who had died in Mulago.

“Two more contacts to the Kassanda case, who are quarantined in Mulago Isolation facility, tested positive for Ebola yesterday…” Aceng said on Twitter.

She added the two had been transferred to a treatment unit at a hospital in Entebbe, 41 km (25 miles) away.

The government has introduced a three-week lockdown around the Mubende and Kassanda districts in central Uganda, the epicentre of the outbreak of the Sudan variant of the Ebola virus.

A Ministry of Health statement on Sunday said the outbreak had so far infected 75 people and killed 28.

The government said last week two other cases of Ebola confirmed in Kampala had come from Mubende and were regarded as originating there, not the capital.