Ebola has killed nearly 4,700 people. Now it is in Nigeria, and there is no vaccine for this strain.

Nigeria has confirmed its first Ebola case in more than a decade, and the strain behind it has no approved vaccine and no approved treatment. The outbreak that produced it has killed about 4,690 of the roughly 9,735 people confirmed infected, most of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to figures published Thursday.

For Black readers in the United States and Canada, Nigeria is not an abstraction. It is the largest Black country on earth and the origin of one of the largest African immigrant communities in both countries.

The patient is a foreign national who arrived in Abuja in early October, health officials said. Africa CDC (the African Union’s public health agency) reported that she had spent two weeks in Kampala, Uganda, and travelled home through Addis Ababa. She developed symptoms days after arriving and visited several health facilities before being hospitalized on Oct. 11. She was initially treated for malaria. Ebola was diagnosed Oct. 21.

That gap is what worries the experts. Nigerian officials are tracing 44 contacts, mostly health care workers and the patient’s spouse, as reported by the Associated Press. Specialists quoted by Nigerian media have questioned how late the case was detected and whether contact tracing and hospital preparedness are adequate.

Jean Kaseya, Africa CDC’s director general, did not soften it. “It shows that the outbreak is serious. We expect a large number of contacts,” he told RFI. “No country is safe unless we strengthen surveillance.” He said the outbreak “remains serious and is not yet under control,” with about 65 to 70 new cases reported each day.

The Bundibugyo virus is a rarer cousin of the Zaire strain that earlier vaccines were built to stop. Congo declared the outbreak May 15, and the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency two days later. It is now the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record. Kenya has reported nine cases and one death. Uganda declared itself Ebola-free in July after 20 cases. France has recorded one case.

Africa CDC has invited African health ministers to an extraordinary virtual meeting on Oct. 28. Kaseya said it would “strengthen our collective response,” and that Ebola “is now affecting three regions of Africa.”

The ministers meet Oct. 28.