Bikoro

Health workers also have been chasing contacts of those infected in Mbandaka city, a provincial capital on the heavily traveled Congo River, and in Bikoro town where the outbreak was declared.

Health workers don protective equipment at Bikoro Hospital in northwest DR Congo -- the epicentre of the latest Ebola outbreak.

Mobile laboratories were deployed to Mbandaka and Bikoro on Saturday, she said, adding that results from the first 12 samples tested with that method should be available tomorrow.

Over the weekend, the AFP News Agency reported that health professionals in the Democratic Republic of Congo have uncovered five new confirmed cases of Ebola: three cases in the Bikoro area and two in Wangata.

The current outbreak, which was officially declared on May 8, began in rural northwestern DRC in a remote area called Bikoro.

The epidemic so far appears to be centred around the village of Ikoko Impenge, near the town of Bikoro, where local health officials had reported 21 patients showing signs of hemorrhagic fever, of whom all but four of whom had died.

The new cases were all around Bikoro.

Two weeks have elapsed since the first laboratory-confirmed case of Ebola was discovered in the remote, rural town of Bikoro in DR Congo's northwestern Equateur Province.

WHO said the two positive samples, out of five tested overall, had come from the Iponge health facility, located close to Bikoro, and additional specimens were being collected for further testing.