W.H.O. Says Ebola Global Threat ‘Low’ as Cases Surge in DR Congo

W.H.O. Says Ebola Global Threat ‘Low’ as Cases Surge in DR Congo

John Hayward

The World Health Organization (W.H.O.) said on Wednesday that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) began much earlier than previously suspected, and is spreading faster than anticipated, but the wider world still has no reason to fear the disease will spread beyond the DRC and neighboring Uganda.

“W.H.O. assesses the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels, and low at the global level,” said the organization’s director, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, at a press conference on Wednesday.

Tedros said there were several reasons for “serious concern about the potential for further spread and further deaths,” including the troubling length of time that Ebola spread in the eastern Congo before the outbreak was detected and containment procedures were implemented.

“First, beyond the confirmed Ebola cases, there are almost 600 suspected cases and 139 suspected deaths. We expect those numbers to keep increasing, given the amount of time the virus was circulating before the outbreak was detected,” he said.

Tedros noted there is “significant population movement in the area,” including both commerce and warfare.

“The province of Ituri is highly insecure. Conflict has intensified since late 2025, and fighting has escalated significantly over the past two months, with over 100,000 people newly displaced,” he said.

“The area is also a mining zone, with high levels of population movement that increase the risk of further spread,” he added.

The outbreak began at least two months before it was officially declared on Friday, including what W.H.O. described as a “critical four-week detection gap” between the first recorded symptomatic Ebola infection and laboratory confirmation.

“Investigations are ongoing to ascertain when and where exactly ​this outbreak started. Given the scale, we are thinking that it started probably a couple of ​months ago,” said W.H.O. technical officer for viral threats Anais Legand.

The first known fatality from the outbreak occurred on April 24 at a medical center in Bunia, the capital of the Ituri province – but Congolese Health Minister Samuel Roger Kamba noted that the victim was a health care worker, which means they probably contracted Ebola from someone who was infected even earlier.

Kamba said the April 24 death was followed by a funeral at which mourners were “touching” the body, which probably became a super-spreader event driving the subsequent surge of cases. W.H.O. was notified of “an unknown illness with high mortality” spreading through the Ituri mining town of Mongbwalu, where the funeral was held, on May 5.

Kamba, who has been critical of the response by provincial and national health officials to the outbreak, also castigated area residents and community leaders for believing Ebola infections were “witchcraft” and seeking treatment from witch doctors and faith healers instead of hospitals.

The MRC Center for Global Infectious Disease Analysis issued a statement on Monday that said there has been “substantial” under-detection of Ebola infections, even after alarms were raised and W.H.O. declared a public health emergency, and the true number of infections could be over a thousand, rather than the 600 suspected cases Tedros mentioned.