Now officially the second-largest in history, the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) appears to be spiraling out of control.

Jeremy Farrar, the head of a frontline organization struggling to contain the disease, offered The Guardian a sobering assessment of the Ebola outbreak’s risk profile:

“I’m very concerned – as concerned as one can be… Whether it gets to the absolute scale of west Africa or not, none of us know, but this is massive in comparison with any other outbreak in the history of Ebola and it is still expanding. It’s remarkable it hasn’t spread more geographically but the numbers are frightening and the fact they are going up is terrifying.”

Impact

As of May 14, the DRC Ebola outbreak has produced 1739 total cases (1651 confirmed) and 1147 deaths (1059 confirmed). And in the most recent sign that the pace of transmission is starting to pick up, the DRC ministry of health reported 19 new cases on May 15 alone.

The outbreak began with four cases testing positive in July of last year. From October to early March the outbreak was well controlled by health authorities, with around 35 new cases every two weeks. From mid-March onward, the pace of new cases picked up dramatically, peaking in the first two weeks of April when over 120 new cases were reported.