Overview
- By late July official data show roughly 3,200 confirmed infections and 1,405 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, after case counts jumped by about 1,000 in ten days.
- Nearly 90% of reported cases are concentrated in Ituri province but infections have now been confirmed in five DRC provinces and across the border in Uganda.
- Response operations are badly disrupted by attacks on treatment sites and strikes by unpaid health workers, and about 80% of new cases are being found outside known contact lists, which hampers tracing and isolation.
- Scientists and partners have accelerated trials: WHO‑sponsored adaptive treatment studies are under way and the University of Oxford has begun first‑in‑human dosing of an experimental vaccine for the Bundibugyo strain.
- WHO and modelling groups warn the true outbreak could be two to four times larger than official tallies, raising the risk that this event could become the country’s second‑largest Ebola epidemic and intensifying humanitarian needs.