Kenya confirmed its first ever case of Ebola on Tuesday, October 6, and the patient, a Kenyan man who had lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the past seven years, has already died. Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale told reporters at Afya House, the health ministry’s headquarters in Nairobi, that laboratory tests found the Bundibugyo species of the virus, the same rare strain behind the outbreak that has killed more than 4,000 people in eastern Congo since May. According to the Kenya Medical Research Institute, as cited by the Associated Press, Kenya had never recorded an Ebola outbreak before.

Duale laid out the man’s route home. He fell ill about a month ago and went to several health facilities in Congo. The WHO says he then traveled by road through Beni to Kampala, the Ugandan capital, on October 2, and Africa CDC, the African Union’s public health agency, says he spent a night in Uganda. He boarded Jambojet flight 8523 and landed at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Saturday, October 3, at about 1:10 p.m. local time (3:10 a.m. PT). He passed through the routine health screening at the airport’s port health and immigration desks, and a relative and a friend drove him straight to Nairobi Hospital. A senior health ministry official told the BBC that medication the man had taken might have masked his symptoms at the airport.

At the hospital, staff isolated him in a separate room in the emergency department and then moved him to the East Wing Isolation Facility, a unit built during the Covid-19 pandemic. Duale said the man showed fever, chills, intense fatigue and weakness, muscle pain, painful swallowing, a sore throat, and bleeding under the skin at injection sites. “Doctors suspected a viral haemorrhagic fever based on his symptoms and travel history and collected samples for testing. The sample tested positive for Ebola Bundibugyo virus,” Duale said, as quoted by the BBC. Both the National Virology Reference Laboratory and a Kenya Medical Research Institute lab confirmed the result. Doctors gave him supportive care, and he died at about 11:30 p.m. on Monday, October 5 (1:30 p.m. PT). Health workers buried him on Tuesday under Ebola’s safe and dignified burial protocol.

The work now turns to the people around him. “So far, we have listed 28 contacts of the deceased, including family members and healthcare workers who attended to the deceased,” Duale said, according to Capital FM Kenya. Officials have also started tracing 23 passengers and four crew members from the same flight, and the WHO says Kenya has begun arranging follow-up and quarantine for anyone judged at risk. Ebola spreads through direct contact with the blood or body fluids of a sick person, or with contaminated materials such as bedding and clothing, so health officials watch contacts for symptoms through the incubation period, usually counted as 21 days. Capital FM pointed out that a listing as a contact does not mean a person has the disease.

Duale stressed that Kenya had prepared. Since the outbreak began in May, he said, Kenya has screened 652,584 travelers, tested 267 samples in five laboratories, including two mobile labs at the Busia and Lwakhakha border crossings with Uganda, and trained 4,971 health workers. “Only one test has turned positive,” he said. He urged Kenyans “not to panic,” asked health workers to stay “extra vigilant,” and told the public to wash hands often, avoid close contact with sick people arriving from countries with active transmission, and report anyone unwell to the nearest health facility. Kenya has placed its border points on high alert, the AP reports, but the government has not announced any general travel restriction.

International health agencies moved quickly. Kenya notified the WHO on Tuesday under the International Health Regulations. Dr. Mohamed Janabi, WHO regional director for Africa, said: “Health emergency preparedness gives us a head start. Kenya has put important outbreak control measures in place.” He added that the priority now lies in finding any further cases before the virus can spread. The WHO says Kenya’s Ebola preparedness score rose from 66% in May to 82% in July, that health teams have identified and assessed isolation units across 27 high-risk counties, and that the agency has delivered about 1,000 Ebola tests and 1,000 sets of protective gear. Africa CDC said a team of its experts would fly to Kenya on Tuesday. Its director general, Dr. Jean Kaseya, said: “I thank the Kenyan authorities for the rapid measures already put in place and reiterate Africa CDC’s full support. I will personally travel to Kenya in the coming days to assess, together with the national authorities, the needs of the response and any additional support required.”

The case comes from an outbreak that keeps growing next door. The WHO has recorded 4,114 deaths among 8,544 cases in Congo, the largest Ebola outbreak in that country’s history and the second deadliest ever recorded, according to the BBC; the AP, citing Congolese government data, calls it the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak in history. Médecins Sans Frontières said on Monday that the virus had begun spreading “like a megafire,” with new hotspots in North Kivu province, which borders Ituri, where the outbreak began, and that transmission there had “intensified dramatically” since early September. Africa CDC says more than 70% of new cases in Congo still turn up among people whom responders had never listed as contacts, a sign that chains of infection keep slipping past the response. Africa CDC also says it has helped mobilize about $2.9 billion for the effort, with backing from the United States and other partners.

Uganda recorded 20 cases, according to the AP, and the BBC reports two deaths there; the WHO declared Uganda’s outbreak over in August. France reported one travel-related case in June. Before Tuesday, the AP notes, no active case existed anywhere outside Congo. Kenya also hosts a U.S.-funded isolation center where American citizens exposed to Ebola must quarantine for 21 days before they fly home, a facility that, the AP reports, drew legal challenges and deadly protests from residents who feared it would bring the virus to them.

Bundibugyo virus has no approved vaccine and no approved treatment. The BBC reports four vaccines in development, with human trials for one of them under way since July, and the WHO says candidate products remain in clinical trials. As of about 9 a.m. PT on Tuesday, Kenyan officials had reported no second case, and this desk had seen no public figure for how many of the flight’s passengers and crew they had reached.