(Reuters) Equatorial Guinea has quarantined more than 200 people and restricted movement after an unknown illness causing hemorrhagic fever killed at least eight people, Health Minister Mitoha Ondo’o Ayekaba said on Friday as the government races to test samples.
The outbreak was reported on Feb. 7, and from preliminary investigations, the deaths were linked to people who all took part in a funeral ceremony, Ayekaba said, adding the government had sent samples to neighbouring Gabon and will send others to Dakar in Senegal for further testing.
Authorities have restricted movement around the two villages that are directly linked, he said, and contact tracing was ongoing. Over 200 people, who are showing no symptoms so far, are quarantined.
“We are trying to quickly as possible rule out the known hemorrhagic fevers we know in the region such as Lassa or Ebola,” Ayekaba told Reuters by telephone.
Equatorial Guinea’s neighbour Cameroon on Friday restricted movement along its border after the “unexplained deaths”, its Health Minister Malachie Manaouda said in a statement.