Ebola: disease killed patient six months after his recovery

DRC taxi driver had been vaccinated but caught disease, then suffered a relapse and infected 91 others

A man in Africa who developed Ebola despite receiving a vaccine recovered but suffered a relapse nearly six months later that led to 91 new cases before he died. The case, outlined in the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday, adds to evidence that the deadly virus can lurk in the body long after symptoms end, and that survivors need monitoring for their own welfare and to prevent spread.

Relapses such as this, from the 2018-2020 outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo, are thought to be rare. This is the first one clearly shown to have spawned a large cluster of new cases.