ABUJA — Nigeria confirmed its first Ebola case of the current African outbreak on Tuesday, a woman in the capital Abuja who had arrived on an international flight from Uganda, and health officials said they had identified 44 people who came into contact with her.

The case brings the virus to Africa's most populous country, widening an outbreak that began in the Democratic Republic of Congo in May and has since reached Uganda and Kenya. It is Nigeria's first recorded Ebola infection since 2014.

"Today, we are confirming that there has been one imported case of Ebola virus disease in the Federal Capital Territory," Muhammad Ali Pate, the Coordinating Minister of Health and Social Welfare, told a news conference in Abuja, according to the state broadcaster Voice of Nigeria.

Pate said the woman began showing symptoms on October 7 and went to a private health facility in Abuja on October 11. She was treated there for several days before laboratory tests confirmed the diagnosis, France 24 reported, citing the minister. She is now in isolation and receiving care.

"The patient is stable, and we're doing everything possible to ensure that we contain this," Pate said.

The 44 contacts include health workers, other patients, caregivers and people who travelled with the woman, Pate said, and all of them are being monitored. Speaking later on the national broadcaster NTA, Pate said officials were asking airlines and aviation authorities for passenger lists so that fellow travellers could be checked, Premium Times reported. He said the woman felt well on the journey and developed symptoms once she was in Nigeria.

"We are doing everything possible to contain this case by tracing all the contacts the individual may have had," Pate said, according to Al Jazeera.

He urged Nigerians to stay calm. "There is no need for panic," he said, adding that President Bola Tinubu was fully aware of the situation and had issued directives. A Presidential Task Force on Ebola Virus Disease was set up in May, and the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention runs a toll-free line, 6232, around the clock.

Pate asked people to give doctors accurate travel histories, particularly after recent trips to Congo, Kenya or Uganda. He said the virus involved was different from the Sudan and Zaire viruses but did not name it. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has identified the outbreak strain as Bundibugyo, for which there is no licensed vaccine or specific treatment.

Uganda pushed back on any suggestion that the woman was infected there. Its health ministry said late on Tuesday that the country had "no confirmed active Ebola cases" and that travel through Uganda "does not establish that infection occurred here." Where she was exposed remains under investigation. Uganda recorded 20 cases between May and June and later declared its outbreak over after 42 days without a new infection, Premium Times reported.

The confirmation came as Kenya reported its ninth case on the same day, a 24-year-old man who is a close relative of the country's first patient. That patient, a businessman in his forties who had lived in Congo and travelled through Uganda, died in a Nairobi hospital on October 5.

"All nine cases belong to one cluster, and as of today there is no evidence of transmission outside this group," Patrick Amoth, Kenya's director-general for health, said, according to Al Jazeera. He said eight patients were stable and 134 of 135 contacts had been traced and quarantined. The United States has warned its citizens against travel to Kenya, citing health risks, France 24 reported.

In Congo, health authorities have recorded 4,381 deaths among more than 9,000 confirmed cases, making it the deadliest Ebola outbreak in the country's history, France 24 reported. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control describes it as the second-largest Ebola epidemic on record.

Jean Kaseya, director general of Africa CDC, said the death rate in Congo was nearing 50 percent and called on the international community to send money, medical supplies and health workers. "With mortality approaching 50% in DRC, we face an extremely serious threat," he wrote on X. He described the outbreak as the most geographically widespread in the history of the disease.

Nigeria's last brush with Ebola came in 2014, when an infected traveller from Liberia arrived in Lagos. The country recorded 19 laboratory-confirmed cases, one probable case and eight deaths before the World Health Organization declared it free of transmission on October 20, 2014, twelve years to the day before Tuesday's announcement.

"Nigeria rapidly mobilised and effectively controlled that outbreak," Pate said, recalling the 2014 response.

The Presidential Task Force and the disease control centre will issue further updates, Premium Times reported. In Kenya, officials expect most of the quarantined contacts linked to the Nairobi cluster to be allowed home from October 25.