Only 17% of suspected mpox tests in the the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had been tested in the past week – a drop of almost 10%, Dr Ngashi Ngongo, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) lead on mpox, told a media briefing on Thursday.

Only seven of the DRC’s 26 provinces in  are reporting on mpox cases, and efforts to address the epidemic are being undermined by conflict and the withdrawal of aid from the United States, he added.

“With the US aid freeze, there is no money for the transportation of specimens,” said Ngongo.

However, Africa CDC is assisting the country to decentralise its laboratory services to make testing available close to outbreaks. The country’s laboratories have been expanded from two to 21 between last July and February.

“But the target was to reach 56 laboratories to be able to get all the health zones to have laboratories to then eliminate the need to transport samples,” said Ngongo, adding that the ongoing conflict, particularly in eastern DRC, had affected plans.

Some two million people are displaced in the DRC due to conflict – most recently in the east, and health players have requested a humanitarian corridor to restore health services to North and South Kivu which have been taken over by M23 rebels.

In better news, some 300,000 people have been vaccinated against mpox over the past 10 days in the DRC capital of Kinshasa – over half the target. The vaccination uptake has increased significantly since health authorities changed its focus from contacts and key populations to anyone living in geographic hotspots, said Ngashi.

However, the new variant of mpox Clade 1A has also been identified in Kinshasa. The variant now has one of the same genes as Clade 1B that is linked to higher transmissibility, and this could also increase the infectiousness of Clade 1A.

Ebola in Uganda

Five cases of Ebola – three confirmed and two probable – have been reported in Uganda over the past week.

The new outbreak was first identified in a four-year-old child, and has no apparent link to the outbreak involving nine people three weeks’ ago. However, genomic testing has established that it is the same strain.

In that outbreak, a nurse was thought to be the index case but as she lived in a city and had no contact Ebola-carrying animals, the usual source of outbreaks, investigations are ongoing to see whether there is another index case, said Ngongo.