Over 500 killed in latest Ebola outbreak

The second-largest, second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history has claimed the lives of nearly 100 children.

At least 97 children, 65 of whom were younger than 5 years old, have died from Ebola virus disease in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo since the outbreak was declared there Aug. 1, according to a press release from Save the Children, a charity supporting the fight against the current epidemic.

A total of 811 people have reported symptoms of hemorrhagic fever in the country's northeastern provinces of North Kivu and Ituri. Among those cases, 750 have tested positive for Ebola, which causes an often-fatal type of hemorrhagic fever, according to Sunday night's bulletin from the country's health ministry.

The number of new cases spiked in January, from about 20 a week to more than 40, according to Save the Children, which expressed concern about misinformation in the local community and mistrust of the medical response.

The growing outbreak has a case fatality rate of nearly 63 percent. There have been 510 deaths thus far, including 449 people who died from confirmed cases of Ebola. The other deaths are from probable cases, the ministry said.

The outbreak so far is centered around the northeast of the DRC, in the regions of North Kivu and Ituri.

This is the 10th outbreak of Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the most severe that the Central African nation has seen since 1976 when scientists first identified the virus near the eponymous Ebola River.

Cultural barriers and misconceptions about the disease have also made stopping the outbreak more difficult.

It's also one of the world's worst, second only to the 2014-2016 outbreak in multiple West African nations that infected 28,652 people and killed 11,325, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.