WHO plays down Congo’s Ebola

said the rapid response had mitigated the risk from the outbreak, which was declared 10 days ago and has killed 25 people since early April.

“Interventions underway provide strong reason to believe that the outbreak can be brought under control,” the committee said in a statement.

They decided not to declare a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC), a formal alert that puts governments on notice and helps mobilise resources and research.

However, committee chairman Robert Steffen said the “vigorous” response to the outbreak must continue.

“Without that, the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly,” he told a news conference in Geneva.

Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust medical charity and an infectious diseases expert, said the decision not to declare an emergency was “the right one for the time being,” but should be kept under review.

“We can’t predict how the outbreak will progress, and the WHO must keep the situation under frequent review and not hesitate to declare a PHEIC if the situation shows signs of deteriorating,” he said in a statement.

The WHO was heavily criticised for being too slow to declare an international emergency during an outbreak in West Africa in 2013 to 2016. That epidemic spread mainly through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It killed more than 11 300 people and infected 28 600.

One of the problems then was locating people who had been in contact with Ebola patients to stop them spreading the deadly virus.

This time, a vaccine is being deployed to try to halt the outbreak.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the vaccine would encourage people to come forward, making him confident that very few of around 532 contacts identified so far would go missing.