The five confirmed cases in Kampala are the first known transmission of the virus in the city, coming days after the information ministry said the country’s Ebola outbreak was coming under control and was expected to be over by the end of the year.

Health minister Jane Ruth Aceng said on Saturday that three patients among 60 people in isolation at Kampala’s Mulago Hospital tested positive for the disease a day earlier.

She had said the three infected people had been in contact with a patient from Kassanda district in central Uganda who had died in Mulago.

“Two more contacts to the Kassanda case, who are quarantined in Mulago isolation facility, tested positive for Ebola yesterday …” Aceng said on Twitter.

She added the two had been transferred to a treatment unit at a hospital in Entebbe, 41km away.

The government has introduced a three-week lockdown around the Mubende and Kassanda districts in central Uganda, the epicentre of the outbreak of the Sudan variant of the Ebola virus.

A government statement on Friday said the outbreak had by then infected 65 people and killed 27. It was not clear if the numbers included the three first new Kampala cases.

The government said last week two other cases of Ebola confirmed in Kampala had come from Mubende and were regarded as originating there, not the capital.