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 Guinea declared a new Ebola outbreak on Sunday in the first
resurgence of the disease there since the 2013-2016 outbreak, while
the Democratic Republic of Congo reported a resurgence of the virus
on Feb. 7.
"We have already alerted the six countries around, including of
course Sierra Leone and Liberia, and they are moving very fast to
prepare and be ready and to look for any potential infection," the
WHO's Margaret Harris told a Geneva briefing. She did not specify
the other countries.
Harris added that health authorities had identified close to 300
Ebola contacts in the Congo outbreak and around 109 in the Guinea
one.
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 Gene sequencing of Ebola
samples from both Congo and Guinea to learn more
about origins of new outbreaks and identify the
strains was under way, she said.
"We don't know if this is down to Ebola
persisting in the human population or if it's
simply moving again from the animal population
but the genetic sequencing that's ongoing will
help with that information," she said.
(Reporting by Emma Farge and Emma Thomasson;
Editing by Alison Williams)
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