back to article Mysterious outbreak with high fatality rate in the DRC could imperil tech supply chains

A mystery disease with a fatality rate higher than COVID-19 has broken out in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and while the global pandemic risk is currently considered to be low, some of the world's biggest tech giants may want to dust off those pandemic supply chain disruption plans.  There have been 406 cases of …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    "To make matters worse, insecurity in the area means armed groups could disrupt the transport of medical experts and disease samples in and out of the region."

    In that case, let's hope the disease spreads to them.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Facepalm

      re: let's hope the disease spreads to them

      And they'll make sure that it spreads far and wide... because they can. If they get caught, the first thing that they will do is infect those who captured them. They have nothing to lose.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Waiting for Trump

    to blame Dr Fauci for creating the disease and slapping a 1000% tariff on all goods coming from the DRC.

    Get the [insert junk cure name here] ready folks. Pandemic on the way and with RFK Jnr in charge (After 20th Jan) there will be no vaccine against it available in the USA.

    Edward Jenner will be turning in his grave.

    1. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Waiting for Trump

      DRC? Looks a little bit like PRC, so he could always just blame "Chine-knee" again ....

      And can I be the first to suggest the quack remedy this time is vitamin C. Not because I have any evidence, but at least it will do very little harm to the gullible.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Waiting for Trump

        "And can I be the first to suggest the quack remedy this time is vitamin C. Not because I have any evidence, but at least it will do very little harm to the gullible."

        FTFY

        "And can I be the first to suggest the quack remedy this time is cyanide . Not because I have any evidence, but at least it will remove the gullible quickly."

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Waiting for Trump

          But now that we know just to avoid vaccines and we'll be safe

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Waiting for Trump

            safe from what?

            well when your dead you'll be safe from learning some fucking sense

            1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

              Re: Waiting for Trump

              Safe from satire, irony and other unAmerican activities.

              All praise RFKjr

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Waiting for Trump

                little note for you, your shit at all 3, try some insurrection for a boost

  3. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Sanitation?

    A fatality rate of under 8% is concerning, but not alarming on it's own. Ebola and other filo-virus infections can be over 90% fatal and rather gruesome. Some diseases lurk in the eaves until there is something else than weakens people's immune systems enough for it to creep in. Poor sanitation, malnutrition and high population densities can be contributors to outbreaks.

    1. JLV Silver badge

      Re: Sanitation?

      > 8% is concerning, but not alarming

      Says you? Covid did quite a mess at 1-2% (it was higher in circumstances where the medical system couldn't cope). So did the 1918 Flu at 2.5%

      Amazing numbers like Ebola's 90% don't mean all that much if a disease has a low enough R factor. And, in the case of Ebola is gruesome and quick enough that people take it very seriously.

      Or take AIDS. For decades it had a 100% rate, yet the nature of its infection vectors made the overall death toll very different from if it had been flu-like (though its capacity to be infectious while asymptomatic for years was a boost to its nastiness).

      Point is, 8% or 90%, means little by itself.

      But, yes, selfishly, hopefully this is limited to Congo, a place on Earth that is already about as miserable to people living there as possible. Hope they get it under control promptly.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Sanitation?

        The transmission vector for AIDS meant that religious doctrine banning condom use meant someone was beatified for effectively killing 12M Africans, and smaller numbers elsewhere.

        Anon because it is an inconvenient and awkward truth that gets flamed every time it is raised.

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: Sanitation?

          > someone was beatified for effectively killing 12M Africans, and smaller numbers elsewhere.

          But given the transmission mechanism activities many of the victims wouldn't be Catholic (or at least were bad Catholics) and so it's a net win.

          And so much easier than previous attempts at reducing market competition and with much less stress on the railway system

      2. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Sanitation?

        "Says you? Covid did quite a mess at 1-2% "

        Yes, I did say that. There's not enough detail in the article to understand if there are any other contributing factors in that region. Lot's of fairly common ailments can have high fatality rates in places where there is little access to healthcare, good food, clean water and proper sanitation. If you look back through medical history, an injury that became infected could easily lead to death as there was no understanding of germ theory, antibiotics, etc. You wouldn't be terrified today if your doctor said you have a tetanus infection, you get some shots/treatment and expect to get well.

      3. DS999 Silver badge

        Re: Sanitation?

        Whether 8% is a big problem depends on how it is spread. Covid was bad even at 1-2% (for the more deadly initial strains) because it spread easily through the air, and half of infections had no symptoms.

        If an 8% fatal disease was spread by bodily fluids, for example, it would be much easier to contain. Or even if it was spread through the air like covid, if it required a longer exposure period and could only be spread by people who had very obvious symptoms (not just coughing but a deep red rash on the face or something like that) then it would be a lot easier to quarantine the sick or stay far away from them if they're out in public.

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: Sanitation?

      But I think we're all aware Covid propagates by airborne transmission and Ebola by direct contact and which is easier to contain.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: Sanitation?

        Discovering the method of propagation of the new mystery outbreak is going to be high on people’s agendas as that will dictate the speed of spread…

    3. Gary Stewart Bronze badge

      Re: Sanitation?

      "Poor sanitation, malnutrition and high population densities can be contributors to outbreaks."

      That certainly explains world leading number of Covid deaths in the US. One of the contributing factors to the lack of pandemic Ebola outbreaks is that it kills so quickly and efficiently that it limits how effectively it can spread. Requiring direct contact for infection is another factor.

      1. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Sanitation?

        "One of the contributing factors to the lack of pandemic Ebola outbreaks is that it kills so quickly and efficiently that it limits how effectively it can spread."

        A variant such as Ebola Zaire does kill very quickly, but there's been mutations that don't knock people down as fast which is very scary for public health agencies, but it seems that the fatality rate for those variants isn't as high. A combination of a long incubation rate AND a high fatality rate would be of enormous concern. There's also some effective treatments available if your doctor can sort out what's wrong with you quickly enough. I can't say how many times I've been quite ill and been waived off as just having a flu. No questions about travel or interest in symptoms. Lucky for me that to date that it has only been an illness that resolves over time, but I'm concerned that the one time when it might not be just "the flu that's going around", it won't be caught quickly enough.

  4. heyrick Silver badge
    Meh

    "Symptoms of the unidentified disease include fever, headache, cough, runny nose, and body aches, with victims in fatal cases also exhibiting difficulty breathing, anemia, and signs of acute malnutrition."

    The economy is shit, production line workers are exceedingly badly paid (so much so that missing any days due to ill health has a non-negligible effect on their financial situation) and it's flu season.

    So you've just described a bunch of people at work...

  5. Brave Coward

    Disgusting

    'If the unknown disease manages to spread beyond the remote villages of Kwango Province, there's the risk it could end up disrupting supplies of critical minerals used in a variety of technology products.'

    Human life losses? Human **african** life losses? Who cares?

    1. Korev Silver badge
      IT Angle

      Re: Disgusting

      I thought this was in rather poor taste too.

      1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        Re: Disgusting

        People complain if the reg reports something without an IT angle

  6. ShortStuff
    FAIL

    Not Again

    Nope, not going to have another fake plandemic, or scamdemic. The gig is up.

    1. Gary Stewart Bronze badge

      Re: Not Again

      Well definitely short in the IQ stuff.

      1. Zolko Silver badge

        Re: Not Again

        The Ukraine war must be going badly for the NATO if they need to resort to a new deadly disease that's going to wipe out humanity (again). And yet, some people still fall into the trap apparently.

        1. Casca Silver badge

          Re: Not Again

          What? Wow...

          Thats just another level of stupid

          1. heyrick Silver badge

            Re: Not Again

            He's probably thinking that Bird Flu hasn't killed us all and Ebola hasn't killed us all and that Monkey Flu Pox Thing hasn't killed us all...

            ...problem is what didn't cause chaos in the past is not a particularly reliable indicator of what might in the future. Covid sort of came out of nowhere and caused quite a bit of problem.

            Plus, I get the impression from the post that it's possibly somebody who thinks that public health directives aimed at reducing the spread are impinging on some misguided sense of "freedom" and that such things are best resolved in court.

            1. anothercynic Silver badge

              Re: Not Again

              The ONLY reason bird flu hasn't made the zoonotic jump to us yet is because of two little things that need to happen. According to epidemiologists, various mutations of the H5N1 virus have managed the one or the other, but not yet both. It is but a question of time when *both* mutations in the code happen at the same time and it finds a suitable host at the same time to make a *lot* of copies.

              The epidemiologists are watching the whole birdflu-in-the-milk thing in California anxiously because they know there are enough people in Cali buying into the "raw milk" thing that could make an epidemic possible.

              1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                Re: Not Again

                "The epidemiologists are watching the whole birdflu-in-the-milk thing in California anxiously because they know there are enough people in Cali buying into the "raw milk" thing that could make an epidemic possible."

                ... and that's an important factor to consider when stating Morbidity/Mortality rates. There could be a rather large group of hippies that contract the illness which makes the percentages look really bad. On other hand, people that aren't consuming raw milk products aren't getting sick would be telling.

                I prefer the UHT process milk. I think it tastes better and it lasts much longer so I'm not pitching out a half full container if I don't go through it fast enough. IF there is some sort of beneficial aspect of milk that's negated through pasteurization, I temper that with the understanding that humans haven't evolved drinking loads of animal milk on a regular basis. I try to eat lots of fruit, veg, nuts, legumes and other foods to get the proper levels of nutrition, but there have been stretches where I ate mostly junk and I'm still alive and walking upright.

                1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

                  Re: Not Again

                  >birdflu-in-the-milk .... there are enough people in Cali buying into the "raw milk" thing that could make an epidemic possible."

                  I know eggs are in the dairy section of the supermarket - but cows aren't birds

                  Damn liberal intektual elites, never had their arm up a cow's arse in their life

            2. cmdrklarg

              Re: Not Again

              **** impinging on some misguided sense of "freedom"

              AKA freedumb.

            3. Zolko Silver badge

              Re: Not Again

              Covid sort of came out of nowhere

              Do you mean by out of nowhere the – verifiable – fact the Davos WEF has actually been conducting an exercice called Event 201 in october 2019 to simulate a pandemic – including Ebola, Zika, MERS and SARS, it's on their bloody webpage ! – that, 3 moths later, nobody could have predicted ?

              Do you know that the virus is called sars-cov-2 : would you care to explain how come that a virus out-of-nowhere is the second-in-a-row ?

              I don't know whats worse : the non-existing world government lying so openly that they don't even try to cover their traces, or people believing such obvious lies, or people actively defending such verifiable lies on such Internet sites as The Register that is supposedly read by educated people.

        2. Roger Kynaston

          Hi Vlad

          Enjoying a tea and chinwag with Bashar?

  7. Bebu sa Ware
    Windows

    CDCs RIP

    I can imagine the totally defective Administration that the clever discerning voters of the US have foisted on the rest of us and incidentally on themselves will was waste little time dismantling the Centers for Disease Control which had played such an important role in dealing with Ebola with that experience subsequently assisting with the global COVID response (if hampered by the same clowns.)

  8. Big_Boomer

    The biggest danger from Covid19 was not it's fatality rate (although that was bad enough), but the transmission medium (airborne) and the incubation period (2 to 14 days) before you experienced symptoms. During that period you were infectious but not sick. That meant that it was spread right across the planet before we could even start to control it. THAT was the reason they wanted everyone to wear masks, to prevent YOU from infecting everyone else whether you were showing symptoms or not. Even now I hear comments from stoopids about how the masks would not protect THEM.<sigh>

    If whatever this is has a similar incubation period but has a 4x higher death rate then it could kill 4x as many as Covid19 did (estimated at 7 Million world-wide directly by Covid19 or nearly 15million in Excess Deaths) or more. If it's another airborne virus like Covid19, let's hope it has a nice short incubation period so can't spread too far, although from what I can see online this may be a known disease as the deaths seem to be linked to severe malnutrition in children.

    Unfortunately these outbreaks will happen more and more often as the world population grows and global travel gets easier and easier. Hopefully our progress in developing vaccines and cures will keep pace with that, and if it doesn't then at least the pandemic deniers and anti-vaxxers will be a self limiting problem.

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      The other aspect of CoViD was how disabling it was for a significant period of time and thus not only overwhelming medical services but also disrupting basic economic activity such as food distribution (eg. neighbours being well enough to go to the shops on behalf of other neighbours who were confined). Many of the measures such as masks didn't totally stop the spread, but slowed it down sufficiently to enable some level of activity to continue throughout the endemic.

      >Unfortunately these outbreaks will happen more and more often as the world population grows and global travel gets easier and easier.

      From memory, we've been getting disease outbreaks with the potential to be pandamic roughly every 10 years. Despite this the Tories decided to dismantle the population health monitoring infrastructure largely put into place for CoViD. So the question is whether things are getting more frequent.

      Interestingly, if you were able to look into the future some 2~3 thousand years ago, and the time compression such a distance would induce, and the need to condense the global situation into a few words, would you describe the present times as a time of war, disease and famine?

      1. heyrick Silver badge

        "Despite this the Tories decided to dismantle the population"

        Just put the full stop there. What haven't the Tories buggered up?

        "would you describe the present times as a time of war, disease and famine?"

        Not really. While these things are, sadly, still ongoing in some parts of the world, in other parts things have improved massively. Children get to go to school and whine about how their "boomer" parents (cough, no, that was your grandparents!) got everything handed to them "it isn't fair it isn't fair" which is a far cry from working up t'mill or down t'mine or anything Dickensian. Health services have massively increased, so things that would have dropped us are now survivable thanks to vaccinations, antibiotics, etc. We're working on things like chemotherapy, immunotherapy etc for the big bad C word. And industrialisation means that much of the developed world is not that far from a mass produced burger.

        So as a species in general, I think we're doing far better than in the past, but we're not there yet.

        If I had to describe the situation, I'd say that we're living in times of chaos. That democratic countries have yet to realise exactly how much foreign influences can mess with their democratic processes, and given that this tends to benefit some rather disturbed people, there will be much resistance towards doing anything about it. So, yes, times of chaos.

      2. doublelayer Silver badge

        "Interestingly, if you were able to look into the future some 2~3 thousand years ago, and the time compression such a distance would induce, and the need to condense the global situation into a few words, would you describe the present times as a time of war, disease and famine?"

        If I'm working at the global level, there's a reason to call it a time of war. You could make an argument for disease, but not as strongly at the moment. Famine is not a word I would use. While there are deaths from starvation, they're limited in location compared to my bronze age vantage point and most others have access to lots of food almost all the time.

        If I'm looking at a global level with an understanding of percentages, no to all of those words. There are wars and diseases and famines, but they're quite small compared to populations. From my actual position in the modern day, that's no comfort to me, let alone to the people who are suffering, but in the unfeeling world of multimillennium statistics, the number of people who are not in a war zone are a larger proportion of the world's population than at many other times in the past. The same goes for those dying from a disease. A person living three thousand years ago, especially as that saw the relatively rapid collapse of several large civilizations, might want to know how likely individuals are to die from those causes, and they'd find that the answer is very unlikely compared to themselves.

    2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      ...although from what I can see online this may be a known disease as the deaths seem to be linked to severe malnutrition in children.

      This is the stuff that helps fuel conspiracy theories. The hype around 'Disease X' has already started to spread, starting a possible new Panicdemic. But as the Bbc put it-

      At least 79 people have died from an unknown disease that is causing flu-like symptoms in south-western Democratic Republic of Congo, the health ministry says.

      That was on the 4th, saying that the WHO had despatched field investigators. The CDC has similar field teams so by now, 'Disease X' should have been identified or sequenced and be known. Maybe it's a Covid mutation, maybe it's something new, but as wiki puts it-

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Kwango_province_disease_outbreak

      These areas have suffered food shortages in preceding months and have low vaccination coverage.

      So as you say, severe malnutrition + disease = higher CFR even from common, easily treated diseases. Plus the comment about 'low vaccination coverage'.. Vaccinations against what?

      ..then at least the pandemic deniers and anti-vaxxers will be a self limiting problem

      At least in this case, it's not a pandemic, yet. Drug dealers may be salivating over the prospects of rushing another new vaccine into production, and selling that to an unsuspecting market. Or it might be quickly quashed with existing vaccines and sending some emergency food aid. Conspiracy theories are already spreading faster than 'Disease X' though.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        "Plus the comment about 'low vaccination coverage'.. Vaccinations against what?"

        Against everything. The article lists several diseases: "acute pneumonia, influenza, COVID-19, measles, and malaria", and there are vaccines for many of those. The rates for each one are low in that region. Hence, there are a number of things that we already know about which could be the cause there. When an outbreak occurs in a population that is mostly vaccinated against those things, then it tends to be either a vaccine-resistant mutation of one of those or it's a new thing. If it happens in an area where people are not resistant to those, then it could be a mutation or new thing or it could be preventable deaths from something we wouldn't catch, and that makes it harder to find out what exactly was causing it.

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          The article lists several diseases: "acute pneumonia, influenza, COVID-19, measles, and malaria", and there are vaccines for many of those.

          Not really. Measles, influenza and Covid are the only ones with regular vaccines, and flu & Covid rely on having a vaccine to match the strain. Malaria vaccines have only just cleared trials and entering mass production and distribution. Plus there are the reported symptoms-

          Those afflicted with the unidentified illness suffered from several flu-like symptoms, including severe headache, cough, high fever, and nausea, with the addition of anemia.

          Which don't match some of those diseases, and could even conceivably be a toxin, ie the region is starving, so it's possible it's food contamination. Some molds and fungi can cause the same symptoms. The wiki article also mentions someone from the region was hospitalised in Italy-

          A man who worked 500 kilometers from the documented outbreak area was hospitalized at the San Luca Hospital in Lucca, Italy, from 22 November to 3 December 2024. He was discharged upon recovery. Samples were collected and will be sent to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità for analysis

          So the results should be known by now. It could be 'Disease X', it could just be e.coli.

          1. doublelayer Silver badge

            So 60% of a set doesn't qualify as many? Or 80% since I just said the vaccines existed, not that all were in common use.

      2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

        >... south-western Democratic Republic of Congo,....

        See, it's the damn democrats fault

    3. MachDiamond Silver badge

      "That meant that it was spread right across the planet before we could even start to control it."

      Very early on, Thunderfo00t overlaid infection rates in the US with a map of airports and interstate highways. The correlation was pretty much what public health experts have prognosticated.

      A correctly worn mask can be good to limit the spread of infection, but it takes a serious sort of mask to prevent you from becoming infected. I still see people wearing masks that are constantly adjusting them by grabbing the front and even if they weren't doing that, they don't have it covering their nose. There are also still plenty that use them to protect their neck (just guessing here that it's what they are doing). People in queues has become a problem again. I fell better with some spacing, but even though there's no point in standing right on top of me, people will crowd up from behind to the point they are bumping into me when they move and I have to ask them (impolitely often enough) to back TF off..... please.

  9. graeme leggett Silver badge

    Vaccinations against what?

    All the childhood diseases that sicken and therefore weaken children, including measles which resets the immune system "memory"

  10. CatBoy
    Headmaster

    Behoove

    behoove - winner of word of the week. Well done !.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Behoove

      A perfectly cromulent word

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