The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that Ebola is spreading through the Democratic Republic of Congo more quickly than in any previous outbreak, even as neighboring Uganda edged closer to being declared free of the virus after discharging its last patient.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that the current outbreak has overtaken the pace of every earlier Ebola crisis in the country’s history. He noted that an Ebola outbreak in the DRC between 2018 and 2020 took more than ten months to reach 2,000 confirmed cases. This time, the same milestone was reached in just two months.
“It is now the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record,” Tedros said, adding that in the past month the virus has expanded faster than any previous outbreak.”
The number of confirmed cases of the disease in Congo climbed to 2,124 by Thursday, according to government figures, after the country’s public health institute reported 51 new infections detected a day earlier in the eastern provinces of Ituri and North Kivu. Congo’s latest count marked a sharp jump from 2,073 confirmed cases reported the previous day, when 62 new infections were logged. Even so, the WHO has cautioned that the true scale of the outbreak could be at least double the official tally, suggesting many cases are going undetected.
The current outbreak, Congo’s seventeenth since Ebola was first identified in the country in 1976, was declared on May 15 following a cluster of deaths in Ituri, a mineral-rich province in the country’s northeast that is also home to numerous armed groups. The disease cases have since been confirmed in five provinces across the Congo, as well as in Uganda, although the vast majority of infections remain concentrated in Ituri.
Tedros said more than 80 percent of new cases are being found outside of known contact lists, a sign that health workers are still missing chains of transmission as the virus moves through communities. He said 377 people have recovered from Ebola in Congo so far. It is evident that with early diagnosis and proper care, the disease can be managed and stopped.
The outbreak response in Ituri has been complicated further by a labor dispute. Healthcare workers went on strike and blocked the entrance to Bunia General Hospital this week, saying they had not been paid for months of work carried out under grueling and dangerous conditions while treating Ebola patients.
Uganda, by contrast, offered a rare piece of encouraging news in the region’s fight against Ebola. The country’s last remaining Ebola patient, a Congolese national who had crossed the border, was discharged Thursday after fully recovering, Uganda’s health ministry said. His discharge marks the start of a 42-day countdown; if no new Ebola cases emerge during that period, the World Health Organization’s guidelines allow Uganda to formally declare itself free of the virus.
Uganda recorded 20 cases of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola since mid-May, the same rare strain driving the outbreak in Congo. Fifteen of those cases involved people who had been infected in Congo before traveling into Uganda. Unlike Congo, where Ebola infections continue to climb rapidly, Uganda has not reported a single new case since June 22.
“Today, Uganda has discharged the last Ebola patient who is ready to be with his family,” the country’s health ministry said in a social media post, adding that the nation was now counting down toward a possible Ebola-free declaration.
The contrast between the two neighboring countries highlights the uneven trajectory of the outbreak, even as health officials warn that Congo’s Ebola crisis, now affecting a population strained by conflict, displacement and a fragile health system, is far from over. The United Nations has separately warned that the outbreak could cost African economies billions of dollars and threaten jobs across the region as the response drags on.
