Overview
- Government data and WHO briefings this week show the outbreak has exceeded 5,000 confirmed cases, with the Ministry of Health reporting about 5,021 infections.
- More than 2,300 people have died, making this the deadliest Ebola epidemic in DRC history and surpassing the 2018–2020 toll.
- The surge is driven by the rare Bundibugyo strain for which there is no licensed vaccine or treatment, though experimental vaccine trials have begun and hundreds of thousands of doses have been premanufactured pending results.
- Response efforts are being blocked by armed conflict, community mistrust and attacks on health teams—including a burned ambulance—and WHO has moved to recruit motorbike riders as local surveillance and reporting partners.
- WHO and partners are expanding capacity by deploying extra epidemiologists, more than 500 community health workers and roughly 400 new beds, but many transmission chains remain unidentified and the risk of further national and cross-border spread is high.