DR Congo’s Ebola outbreak becomes its deadliest with 1,707 dead

By Samuel Abiola · 2026-08-02

The numbers that define a record outbreak

The Democratic Republic of Congo had recorded 3,802 confirmed Ebola cases and 1,707 deaths as of 4 August 2026, according to the latest government update.^[9] That is a case fatality rate near 45 per cent. The figures place the 2026 outbreak well clear of the 2018-2020 epidemic in eastern DRC, which produced 3,317 confirmed cases and was itself the second-largest Ebola outbreak in recorded history, making this the worst the country has ever documented.^[10]

The pace is what separates this outbreak from every one before it. The 2014-2016 West Africa epidemic remains far larger in absolute terms, with about 28,000 cases and more than 11,000 deaths, but it took roughly eight months to reach 1,000 deaths.^[9] The DRC passed that mark in under three months.

WHO’s most recent published assessment, dated 2 August and current to 30 July, put the DRC total at 3,605 confirmed cases and 1,587 deaths, with 651 recoveries and a case fatality rate of 44 per cent.^[10] The roughly 200 cases and 120 deaths added in the five days to 4 August sit in the gap between WHO’s verified count and the government’s running total.

What has changed since late July

Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya travelled to Bunia, the Ituri town near the outbreak’s epicentre, for a second visit on 4 August and said it was not clear when the outbreak would reach its peak.^[9] He said nearly 80 per cent of new cases are not coming from contact tracing but from community spread, which means the response is finding most infections only after the virus has already moved.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus arrived in Kinshasa on 4 August and is expected to visit Bunia later in the week.^[9] WHO said the same day that it was monitoring more than 17,000 potential contacts, with nearly 80 per cent of them seen daily.^[9] Its 30 July count put the figure at 17,863 contacts identified, of whom 13,455 were under active follow-up.^[10]

Patient zero has still not been identified.^[9] Displacement from armed conflict and illegal mining across the region have made it difficult to trace the thousands of people who have come into contact with infected individuals, leaving the response without the origin point that normally anchors it.

Treatment capacity is expanding. Health partners are opening the country’s largest Ebola treatment centre this week, with 100 beds, and UN agencies working with the United States and the International Medical Corps have set up a transit centre at the Kigonze displacement camp on the outskirts of Bunia to identify suspected cases faster.^[11] WHO delivered 30 additional beds and 38 mattresses to Nizi, taking that centre to 80 beds.^[11]

Staffing is moving the other way. Health workers in the badly affected town of Mongbwalu issued an ultimatum on 3 August over unpaid wages, saying that “if nothing is done within 24 hours, we will escalate our action”.^[9] Workers in Bunia had already gone on strike over pay and dangerous conditions. WHO has recorded 151 confirmed infections among health workers, including 44 deaths and 68 recoveries, a case fatality rate of 29 per cent.^[10]

Why the Bundibugyo strain changes everything

The virus driving this outbreak is not the Zaire strain that dominated the last decade of Ebola response. Bundibugyo virus, a distinct Ebola species first identified in Uganda in 2007, has no licensed vaccine and no approved specific treatment.^[2] The tools that contained the 2018-2020 Kivu epidemic, including the Merck vaccine Ervebo and monoclonal antibody treatments, were developed for the Zaire strain and offer no direct protection here.

That gap is now being worked on rather than waited out. Two clinical trials of post-exposure prophylaxis drugs are running in Ituri province, and two separate vaccine trials have begun in the United Kingdom and Canada.^[9] Enrolment in a study of two possible Ebola treatments recently started in Ituri.^[9] Vasee Moorthy, WHO’s research and development lead, had earlier said the most promising candidate is an rVSV Bundibugyo vaccine, the equivalent for this strain of Ervebo, the licensed Merck vaccine used against the more common Zaire strain since 2019.^[3]

None of that changes the position of a patient presenting at a treatment centre in Ituri this week. Trials establish safety and efficacy over months, and a licensed product for the Bundibugyo strain sits beyond the horizon of the current acute phase.

The outbreak was formally declared on 15 May 2026, when the ministries of public health of the DRC and Uganda jointly announced an Ebola event caused by Bundibugyo virus.^[4] In under three months, the DRC’s confirmed case count crossed 3,800, a velocity that reflects both the strain’s transmission characteristics and the conditions on the ground.

Ituri, Kivu and the collapse of contact tracing

The epicentre sits in Ituri province, which shares a border with South Sudan and Uganda and accounts for 88 per cent of confirmed cases and 82.6 per cent of deaths nationwide.^[10] Within Ituri, the heaviest counts are in the Bunia, Rwampara, Mongbwalu and Nizi health zones.^[10] Cases have now been confirmed across 49 health zones in five provinces, including Tshopo, home to Kisangani, one of the country’s largest cities.^[9]

Sustained transmission has also taken hold in North and South Kivu, provinces where the M23 armed group and DRC government forces have been in active conflict.^[2] Contact tracing, the backbone of any Ebola response, requires the ability to move freely, speak to community members and follow up confirmed cases for 21 days. In M23-controlled territory, that is not reliably possible.

WHO has said response efforts are hampered by insecurity, displacement, high population mobility and porous borders, all of which complicate contact follow-up.^[2] Attacks on health facilities have compounded it. After a 15 July attack on a hospital and a treatment centre in Ituri’s Nyakunde health zone, international partners supporting the response had to relocate temporarily, disrupting surveillance, contact tracing and supplies.^[12]

Displacement compounds the problem in a specific way. Around 270,000 people who have fled violence now live in displacement sites across Ituri, conditions in which the virus spreads readily.^[11] People moving between health zones seed new clusters in areas with weaker surveillance, and high mobility across the Ugandan and Rwandan borders accelerates geographic spread before any single cluster is contained.

Kaseya said 63 per cent of confirmed deaths in a recent two-week period occurred outside treatment centres, largely because of unsafe handling of infected bodies by residents, including touching remains that stay highly infectious.^[12] Deaths outside the system are also transmission events the system never sees.

Exported cases: Uganda, France and Germany

Uganda confirmed 20 cases linked to the outbreak and on 28 July 2026 the Ugandan Ministry of Health declared its own Ebola outbreak over, following the discharge of its last patient in mid-June.^[5] Dr Chris Baryomunsi, Uganda’s Minister of Health, said: “It has been two months since we declared the outbreak and we are now celebrating the discharge of the last patient. This shows that Ebola is defeatable if we adhere to measures and establish strong systems.”^[6] Uganda’s containment, achieved without a licensed vaccine for this strain, is the clearest proof-of-concept available that non-pharmaceutical interventions can work when conditions allow them to.

France’s Ministry of Health confirmed one imported Ebola case on 24 June 2026.^[5] In Germany, two patients whose cases were initially confirmed in the DRC were evacuated for treatment.^[7] On 13 July 2026, a US humanitarian worker who had contracted Ebola in the DRC was medically evacuated to Germany for treatment.^[8] None of those European cases generated sustained local transmission, and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control assessed the risk to the general European population as low.

What would change the trajectory

The variables that drive outbreak trajectory, including a usable vaccine, a ceasefire stabilising the eastern provinces and a surge in healthcare workers reaching active transmission zones, are not yet in place. Trials of post-exposure prophylaxis and of Bundibugyo vaccine candidates have started, which is a change from the position in July, though none of them will deliver a licensed tool inside the current acute phase.^[9]

Uganda’s experience offers a partial template. Baryomunsi’s government moved quickly on isolation, contact tracing and community engagement, holding the country’s case count to 20 and extinguishing the outbreak within two months.^[6] Replicating that in Ituri, North Kivu or South Kivu would require conditions that do not presently exist, and the conflict geography that defines eastern DRC is not incidental to this outbreak.

The share of new cases found through contact tracing rather than community spread is now the clearest indicator of whether the response is gaining ground on the virus. Africa CDC put that share at roughly one in five in early August, which leaves four in five infections being detected only after the virus has moved beyond the reach of the teams chasing it.^[9]

Samuel Abiola

Samuel Abiola writes about inequality and social policy. He works close to the research and is interested in what the numbers mean for the people counted in them.