An Ebola outbreak caused by the Bundibugyo virus, declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo on 15 May 2026, has reached nearly 2,000 confirmed cases and may be substantially larger than official figures suggest, according to the World Health Organization.
As of 11 July 2026, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 1,926 cases and 702 deaths in DRC, with a further 21 cases and 2 deaths in Uganda's capital Kampala, bringing the total to 1,947 confirmed cases and 704 deaths. The CDC figures were published on 13 July 2026.
WHO emergencies director Chikwe Ihekweazu said on 14 July 2026 that modelling indicates the outbreak is "at least two to four times the number of cases that we have found," citing test positivity rates as a key signal. The true death toll is therefore unknown. Undercounting is a recurring structural problem in Ebola responses: during the 2014 West Africa outbreak, WHO acknowledged by August of that year that case numbers vastly underestimated the true scale, attributing gaps to concealment, denial, and clinic closures.
A further indicator of undetected spread: a provisional index case has been identified as a person who died on 20 April 2026, approximately two months before the outbreak was formally declared, suggesting the virus circulated undetected for an extended period. The precise origin and spillover event remain unknown.
The outbreak is spreading faster than any Ebola crisis previously recorded. According to CDC, confirmed cases surpassed 1,000 within 40 days of response activation. The same milestone took approximately 235 days during the 2018 North Kivu outbreak. A senior WHO official reported that four in every five new cases in parts of DRC have no known link to existing patients, a pattern that complicates contact tracing and containment.
Confirmed transmission has been recorded across five DRC provinces — Haut-Uele, Ituri, Nord-Kivu, Sud-Kivu, and Tshopo — as well as Kampala. The full geographic extent of the outbreak, particularly in remote or conflict-affected areas, is not known. The degree to which insecurity in Ituri province is impeding response operations has not been quantified in available sources.
The causative agent, Bundibugyo virus, is rarer than the Zaire species responsible for the 2018–2020 DRC outbreak, for which an approved vaccine existed. No licensed vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo species. Whether emergency authorisation for any candidate intervention is feasible, and on what timeline, remains unknown.
WHO declared the outbreak a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 17 May 2026, two days after the initial declaration. One imported case has been confirmed in Europe; the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control assessed the overall risk to the general public as very low as of 29 May 2026. No cases have been confirmed in the United States, where CDC also assesses the risk to the public and to travellers as very low.
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