Still No Positive ID -- But Now At Least 143 Dead In DRC "Mystery" Ailment... Per The Jerusalem Post.

With luck, we should have a solid PCR lead on the source of these infections, by Monday night. Tests are being run as we type this. Results expected by tomorrow night, at the latest. Then the question will be how long health authorities will wait to make the results public.

We mentioned that we don't favor calling this thing "Disease X" (seems just a needlessly scary approach), and hopefully, soon we will have a real bio-scientific name for it. Here's the latest, from just one hour ago, now:

. . .A mysterious disease referred to as 'Disease X' has caused at least 143 deaths and nearly 400 reported cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), primarily affecting young individuals aged 15 to 18, according to multiple reports. The outbreak began on October 24 in the Kwango province, which borders Angola. The government is on "maximum alert" due to the severity of the situation.

The World Health Organization (WHO) dispatched a team of experts to the affected region to assist local authorities in investigating the outbreak and determining the cause of the disease, as reported by Modern Ghana. The WHO team includes epidemiologists, clinical doctors, laboratory technicians, infection control specialists, and risk communication experts, according to O Globo.

Samples from infected patients have been collected and sent to central laboratories in Kinshasa for analysis, with results expected within 24 to 48 hours. "We are waiting for the laboratory results in the next 24 to 48 hours, so that we know exactly what it is," said Dieudonné Mwamba, director general of the National Public Health Institute, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung. . . .

Do stay tuned. As ever, we hope it is identified as some critter we already know a bit about how to combat -- and not an entirely new MacGillah. Onward.

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