Patrick Amoth, Kenya’s director-general for health, said on 18 October, on Citizen TV, that of 38 tests that day one came back positive. Kenya’s total: eight. A 49-year-old man, not a clinician. Fever, headache, muscle pain. DW. Straits Times, via Reuters: a patient attendant who cleaned utensils and linen, probably exposed to Kenya’s first case. Symptoms on 17 October, isolated, confirmed on 18. This is not a ninth invented outbreak. It is the eighth case in the same country.

Kenya’s first case, WHO, 5 October: a man who came from the DRC through Uganda, admitted in Nairobi, died on the 5th. The virus is Bundibugyo (BDBV), not the Zaire strain for which the rVSV vaccine exists. DW: there is no approved vaccine or specific treatment for Bundibugyo. Amoth: the other six patients in quarantine are stable, on supportive care. One dead, one new, six stable: eight.

Also on 18 October, Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research confirmed two cases, including one death, in Nord-Ubangi, the eighth province. AP: two men in their 20s, Wapinda health zone, on the border with Bas-Uele, where cases had already been reported. The province borders the Central African Republic. The other seven, on Reuters’s list: North Kivu, Ituri, Haut-Uele, Tshopo, South Kivu, Bas-Uele, South Ubangi. WHO, on 6 October, still counted seven provinces. The eighth is Sunday’s, not the old DON.

The Congolese tally moves daily. Reuters, report to 16 October: 9,415 cases, 4,536 deaths since the start; 67 new cases and 26 deaths in 24 hours, 44 in Ituri. WHO, 6 October: 8,728 confirmed, 4,205 deaths, CFR 48.2%. We have not mixed the two dates into one total.

Kenya is on alert, not in panic, the ministry said after the first two cases. Uganda is on the transit route. A health worker evacuated to the Netherlands, still WHO, 1 October. Those are other lines, not the 49-year-old.

Eight in Kenya. An eighth province in Congo. The same virus, two counts.

Image: Kenyatta National Hospital, Nairobi, 28 December 2014, Rotsee, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. Archive, not the 49-year-old’s ward.

Sources consulted: Kenya confirms eighth Ebola case as regional outbreak spreads — The Straits Times; Ebola disease caused by Bundibugyo virus - Democratic Republic of the Congo — WHO.