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More than 3,000 people have now died in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak out of 6,250 confirmed cases, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said Thursday, as the virus kills nearly half of those it infects as it outpaces efforts to contain it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe numbers are telling the story,\u201d Dr Wesam Mankula, lead of the Continental Incident Management Support Team, told reporters at Africa CDC\u2019s weekly briefing. \u201cThis outbreak is still evolving.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 16 weeks, the epidemic has spread over an area larger than the United Kingdom, France, and more than 35 African states. It is already the second largest Ebola outbreak in DRC\u2019s history, and is on track to be the largest on record, with 6.5 times the caseload that the 2014 West Africa epidemic had at the same stage.<\/p>\n
Africa CDC reports that 89% of listed contacts are being followed up, but Mankula acknowledged the number of contacts actually being identified per case falls well short of the target. Each confirmed patient should generate a list of 40 to 60 people they may have exposed, but most lists are far shorter, meaning the vast majority of potential contacts are never traced. Adjusted for that shortfall, the effective contact tracing rate drops to just 19%, Mankula said.<\/p>\n
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Reported cases and deaths at the 16-week mark compared with previous Ebola outbreaks. The current epidemic dwarfs all others in recorded history, sitting at 6.5\u00d7 more cases and 5.0\u00d7 more deaths than the next-highest comparator at the same point.<\/p>\n
Without adequate tracing, many patients are never identified until it is too late. That tracing shortfall continues to play out in affected provinces, with more than 60% of deaths in the past seven days occurring in the community, with people dying before they could be reached and referred to treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is highlighting the importance of pushing more community health workers, senior experts from the surveillance focusing on case investigation, to improve contact listing and contact tracing,\u201d Mankula said. \u201cHopefully, with pushing more community health workers, we can see improvement in the community tracing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weekly confirmed cases peaked at 537 during the week of 10 August and have since dipped to 464 and 479, a 12% decline Mankula called a \u201cplateau phase,\u201d though he cautioned a similar plateau in June was followed by a surge.<\/p>\n
Four health zones have gone more than 42 days without new infections, the established international benchmark for interrupted transmission, and five more are in a control phase. But 51 health zones still have active transmission, and each infected person is still passing the virus to more than one other on average, meaning the outbreak continues to grow.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very still very early to say we brought this outbreak under control,\u201d Mankula said.<\/p>\n
The epidemic migrates into a warzone
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Nearly half of those infected by the Bundibugyo strain have died. Chart shows cumulative cases and deaths from May 15 to 1 September, the latest data available.<\/p>\n
Cases in Ituri province, the epicentre with more than 5,100 infections, fell 12% over the most recent three-week window. But as the outbreak appears to settle in Ituri, caseloads are accelerating elsewhere, Africa CDC officials said.<\/p>\n
North Kivu, where armed groups including M23 have displaced millions in an ongoing civil war, saw cases more than double and deaths rise 98% in the same period, with the highest case fatality rate of any affected province at 67.7%.<\/p>\n
Further north, in the remote and densely forested provinces of Haut-U\u00e9l\u00e9 and Bas-U\u00e9l\u00e9 bordering South Sudan and the Central African Republic, cases are surging too. Haut-U\u00e9l\u00e9 cases nearly tripled in the most recent three-week window, and Bas-U\u00e9l\u00e9, the sixth province to be affected, is now reporting cases for the first time.<\/p>\n
The conflict has made some health zones inaccessible to international and government responders, as communities and armed groups refuse entry. Mankula said responders urgently need negotiated humanitarian corridors in order \u201cto do their function, moving from one place to another, support active case search, contact identification, contact isolation, infection prevention control measures, expanding Ebola treatment centres in those affected zones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Health workers in the crossfire<\/p>\n
Violence Against Ebola Responders Mounts in DRC as Red Cross Condemns Attacks<\/a><\/p>\n Forty-seven healthcare workers have died from the virus out of 163 infected, according to Africa CDC briefing data presented Wednesday, up from the 43 deaths reported<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n Beyond the virus, workers face direct violence: the Red Cross has documented<\/a> 11 violent incidents in the first 100 days of the outbreak, with volunteers attacked and ambulances set on fire by communities fuelled by mistrust and misinformation. Eight health workers have been killed in attacks as of 22 August, according to the UN\u2019s senior Ebola coordinator<\/a>.<\/p>\n Health workers risking infection and violent assault have also faced months of delayed or missing pay, triggering repeated strikes<\/a> since July. Asked about the delays, Prof Yap Boum, Africa CDC\u2019s field manager in DRC, said the government had begun registering and paying workers in Bunya and Rampara.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a while since you have not heard about those strikes because the government have done two things,\u201d Boum said. \u201cOne is to ensure that they can register the staff that are working, but also starting to pay them\u2026 at least all those that were working in treatment centre.\u201d<\/p>\n Boum said he expected payments to be completed by next week. Payment disputes have been a persistent obstacle to the response, and aid agencies have warned that sustained, timely compensation for frontline workers is essential to maintaining the workforce needed to contain the outbreak.<\/p>\n Vaccines and therapeutics in the pipeline No licensed vaccine or treatment exists for the Bundibugyo strain of the virus, leaving health workers and communities without the protection that helped bring previous Zaire Ebola outbreaks under control. Authorities are fast-tracking several candidates through clinical trials to try to close that gap, Africa CDC said.<\/p>\n The Ervebo vaccine, effective against Zaire, is being deployed to frontline workers under compassionate use despite unproven efficacy against Bundibugyo. More than 1,100 healthcare workers have received it so far, and a solidarity trial is expected to begin in DRC within a week, Africa CDC reported.<\/p>\n \u201cThe vaccine Ervebo is effective for the Zaire strain, but its efficacy against the recent strain, the Bundibugyo, has not been demonstrated yet,\u201d said Prof Placid Mbala, Africa CDC\u2019s Director of Research. \u201cBut we believe that we may see some cross-protection\u2026 this is why we are using the Ervebo vaccine mostly to also evaluate the impact of this vaccine during this outbreak, and also to conduct a kind of vaccine effectiveness and efficacy study in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n Phase one trials for vaccine candidates from Shaddock and Moderna are underway in the UK and Canada respectively, and Egypt\u2019s Mina Pharma has received $16.5 million from CEPI to advance its own candidate.<\/p>\n Two therapeutic trials are also progressing, Mbala said. A post-exposure prophylaxis trial, which is testing whether drugs given to contacts of confirmed cases can prevent them from developing the disease, has recruited 216 of a 400-person target. If effective, they would become a vital tool in slowing transmission by protecting people before they can be infected.<\/p>\n A separate trial testing remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies in confirmed patients has enrolled 334 of 500. About 35 participants have so far reached the 28-day mark at which initial analysis can begin, with the first readouts expected by mid-September.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I think with the first 100 participants, we won\u2019t be able to see the efficacy of these different drugs,\u201d Mbala said. The trial\u2019s safety monitoring board will then determine whether to continue recruitment toward the full 500 or add further therapeutics.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an adaptive protocol,\u201d Mbala added. \u201cWe may add more therapeutics when they can be available.\u201d<\/p>\n Image Credits: MSF<\/a>, DRC Health Ministry<\/a>.<\/p>\n Combat the infodemic in health information and support health policy reporting from the global South. Our growing network of journalists in Africa, Asia, Geneva and New York connect the dots between regional realities and the big global debates, with evidence-based, open access news and analysis. To make a personal or organisational contribution click here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than 3,000 people have now died in the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[163,85,46],"class_list":["post-604716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Ebola-vaccine-arrives.jpeg\")
DRC Minister of Health Dr Roger Kamba (centre) receives the first consignment of the Ervebo vaccine at N\u2019djili International Airport in Kinshasa on 21 August.<\/p>\n