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Chikwe Ihekweazu, director of emergency operations at the World Health Organization, said that four out of five new Ebola infections in parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo are not linked to known cases, warning that the actual scale of the outbreak may be two to four times larger than official data suggests.

These figures reflect the challenges faced by health workers in their efforts to contain the outbreak in the northeastern part of the country, which according to government data released on Thursday has infected about 1,792 people and killed 625 others.

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Ihekweazu told Reuters in an interview late on Thursday that '80% of new confirmed patients are not on known contact lists' in the outbreak epicenter in Bunia, Ituri province.

He added that almost all new cases in areas with lower infection numbers, such as North Kivu province, come from contact lists, indicating some progress in containment efforts.

Congolese health workers receive an Ebola patient (Reuters)

He continued that WHO estimates, based on computational models and test positivity rates, indicate that the outbreak, declared in mid-May, may be two to four times larger than the number of confirmed cases.

About 90% of all reported cases remain concentrated in Ituri province.

The virus has also spread outside the epicenter to North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, and recently to Tshopo province.

Ihekweazu said that about half of the patients tested for Ebola in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province with a population of about one million, had positive results, indicating widespread and ongoing community transmission.

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