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On Wednesday, the seven men were scared after returning from the city of Goma, in North Kivu province, to the city of Birava, located in South Kivu – a province that escaped a epidemic that goes back a year.
The group was initially quarantined with eight people who had come to greet it, but on Thursday, South Kivu's governor, Theo Ngwabidje Kasi, told reporters that the 15 had been tested negative for Ebola.
The WHO said the seven people, including a woman and six of the children of the man, had now been brought back from Birava to Goma.
They were placed under surveillance with other family members of the deceased patient.
"All seven were vaccinated and brought back to Goma, we put them in a hotel last night and today we put them in an apartment to keep them there so that they can be monitored", told AFP Dr. Boubacar Diallo, coordinator of Ebola surveillance at WHO.
"Until now, none of the seven have presented symptoms."
The miner, who died Wednesday, was the second Ebola victim in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, which is the epicenter of the epidemic.
The two deaths, which occurred in a major transportation hub and in a border town of two million residents, have heightened fears that the epidemic is spreading in neighboring countries.
The miner's wife and one of her daughters have been infected with the Ebola virus and are being treated in a hospital in Goma, according to the Congolese authorities.
Diallo said the authorities had already found 282 people who had been in contact with the three cases in this family and that "almost all" high-risk contacts had been identified.
The epidemic, which erupted in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on August 1, 2018, resulted in 1,823 deaths, according to Ministry of Health figures released Friday.
The WHO has elevated the epidemic to the rank of a global health emergency.
Health experts are particularly worried when a contagious disease breaks out in a city.
In urban areas, population density, anonymity and high mobility greatly complicate the isolation of patients and the search for contact with the campaign.
The Ebola virus causes fever, vomiting and severe diarrhea, often followed by kidney and liver failure and internal and external bleeding.
The disease is transmitted through contact with infected body fluids and is combated with the help of laborious contact research and quarantine techniques.
The latest epidemic is the second deadliest ever after the death of more than 11,000 people in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia between 2014 and 2016.
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