“We are entering a new phase of the Ebola outbreak that is now affecting three health zones, including an urban health zone,” the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Minister of Health Oly Ilunga Kalenga said in a statement in French late Wednesday. The World Health Organization (WHO), which is working with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s health ministry and its partners, announced Thursday that it has deployed 30 experts to conduct surveillance in Mbandaka, following news of the confirmed case there. Another lethal case in Wangata on Thursday was a suspected one, Xinhua news agency reported.The government statement said the total number of Ebola cases is now 45, including 10 suspected cases, 21 probable cases and 14 confirmed cases.The Ebola outbreak in the DRC has entered a "new phase" after it spread to a large city, Health Minister Oly Ilunga said on Wednesday.The new case of Ebola virus disease has been confirmed in Wangata, one of the three health zones of Mbandaka, a city of nearly 1.2 million people in Equateur Province in northwestern Congo, the World Health Organization confirmed Thursday, CNN reported.The spread of the virus from rural areas into a city has raised fears it could quickly spread and become harder to control. An outbreak of Ebola, once confined to remote rural areas in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, now has spread to an area just outside of city of more than one million people, health officials said Thursday. But “urban Ebola can result in an exponential increase in cases in a way that rural Ebola struggles to do.”

Mbandaka, a city of almost 1.2 million, is in a busy travel corridor in Congo’s northwest Equateur province and is upstream from the capital, Kinshasa, a city of about 10 million. The World Health Organization has raised the threat level for an outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after additional suspected cases of the disease were identified in Mbandaka, a Congo River port city with over a million residents.
Two more cases of ebola reported in the city of Mbandaka in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 25 people have died this year in the country from the disease, with a wider outbreak feared.