Congo Plans to Start Using J&J’s Ebola Vaccine From Next Month

(Bloomberg) -- The Democratic Republic of Congo will distribute a second vaccination for Ebola from Johnson & Johnson at the beginning of November.

The vaccine will first be distributed to two communes in Goma, the trading hub on the border with Rwanda, Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the head of the country’s Ebola response effort, told reporters Saturday in the capital, Kinshasa. More than 64,000 people cross the border there each day, he said.

Johnson & Johnson will progressively ship about 200,000 doses of the vaccine to Rwanda and another 500,000 to Congo starting Oct. 18, Muyembe said.

“Our goal is to create an immunological curtain that will prevent the virus from leaving the infected zone to the uninfected zone,” he said.

The Ebola outbreak, which was first announced in August 2018, has killed 2,146 people as of Oct. 10. Another vaccine manufactured by Merck & Co., has already been given to more than 230,000 people since August 2018.

To contact the reporter on this story: Michael J. Kavanagh in Kinshasa at mkavanagh9@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gordon Bell at gbell16@bloomberg.net, Paul Richardson

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