PRETORIA, October 31. /TASS/. The number of confirmed Ebola deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has exceeded 5,000 since May, with more than 10,350 confirmed cases registered in total, the country’s Ministry of Public Health, Hygiene and Social Welfare said.

Since the beginning of the epidemic in the DRC, a total of 10,351 confirmed cases and 5,026 deaths have been recorded, with the fatality rate standing at 48.6%, the ministry said in its bulletin.

The current Ebola outbreak began on May 15 in the DRC and Uganda. Ugandan authorities announced on July 28 that the outbreak in the country had ended. The World Health Organization confirmed this on August 25. In neighboring Kenya, the first case of Ebola was confirmed on October 6.

The patient was a Kenyan national who had previously lived in the DRC. He arrived in Nairobi via Uganda on October 3 and died on October 5. As of October 19, a total of eight cases had been detected in Kenya.