Mapped: The 2026 Ebola Outbreak in DRC and Uganda — and Every Outbreak Since 1976

On 16 May 2026, the World Health Organization declared the new Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) — the highest-level alert under the International Health Regulations and only the eighth such declaration since the framework’s modern adoption in 2005. The trigger: an outbreak of Bundibugyo virus disease in eastern DRC’s Ituri Province, with cross-border spread to Uganda and the first known intercontinental medical evacuation already underway.

Latest figures (12 August 2026): WHO Disease Outbreak News 2026-DON615, published 14 August, puts DR Congo at 4,665 confirmed cases and 2,184 deaths, a case-fatality rate of 46.8%, with 965 recoveries. Adding Uganda’s 20 cases and 2 deaths and the single case in France takes the outbreak total to 4,686 confirmed cases and 2,186 deaths.

That makes it the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in DR Congo, past the 2018–2020 epidemic’s 3,317 confirmed cases, and the second-largest anywhere. Epidemiological week 32, to 9 August, was the worst yet, with 579 new cases and 304 deaths.

Transmission has not slowed since. In the 24 hours to 13 August DR Congo reported 99 new confirmed cases and 56 deaths, and by 12 August 965 people had recovered. The confirmed death toll passed 2,000 on 9 August, 86 days after the outbreak was declared.

The outbreak now covers 54 health zones across six provinces: Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Haut-Uélé, Tshopo and Bas-Uélé. Ituri remains the epicentre with 85% of confirmed cases, 3,979 of 4,665.

Bas-Uélé became the sixth affected province on 13 August, when a case imported from Haut-Uélé was identified in the provincial capital Buta and later died. Gombari in Haut-Uélé and Bafwasende in Tshopo were added in the first week of August.

Contact follow-up has improved to 84.2% of listed contacts as of 14 August, up from about 75% in early August, but it remains short of the 95% the WHO considers necessary to break transmission chains. Some 634 patients are hospitalised in isolation.

On 2 August the WHO said the outbreak is intensifying at an “exceptional” pace, with sustained transmission and continued increases in cases and deaths. It named insecurity, population displacement and cross-border movement as the main obstacles to the response.

Nothing had changed by mid-August. WHO’s 14 August Disease Outbreak News describes a phase of intense transmission, rates the risk in DR Congo as very high, and notes the outbreak is expanding faster than any previous Ebola outbreak.

Strikes by unpaid health workers, misinformation and traditional burial practices are slowing the response further, on top of the insecurity in Ituri and North Kivu.

Health workers are being hit hard: 155 confirmed infections, 45 deaths (a 29% case-fatality rate) and 68 recoveries. At least 965 people in DR Congo and 18 in Uganda have recovered overall.

The virus has reached Europe three times. Two patients were medically evacuated from DR Congo to Berlin’s Charité, in May and again on 13 July, and France confirmed an imported case on 24 June. The ECDC rates the risk to people living in the EU or EEA as very low.

This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in the DRC since the virus was identified in the country in 1976 — the highest count of any nation. The map below shows the geography of all known Ebola outbreaks since then, with the DRC at the centre.

The Current Outbreak: A Timeline

• 24 April 2026 — A health worker in Bunia, Ituri Province, develops fever, vomiting, intense malaise, and signs of haemorrhagic illness. He dies at a medical centre in Bunia. Index case, retrospectively.
• 5 May 2026 — WHO receives an alert about an unknown high-mortality illness in Mongbwalu Health Zone, Ituri. Four healthcare workers have died within four days.
• 13 May 2026 — Rapid response teams complete in-depth investigations in Mongbwalu and Rwampara health zones. Initial Ebola Xpert testing on 20 Rwampara samples is negative; samples sent to Kinshasa for full PCR.
• 15 May 2026 — DRC’s national reference laboratory (Institut National de la Recherche Biomédicale) confirms Orthoebolavirus bundibugyoense by PCR and genomic sequencing. DRC Ministry of Public Health officially declares the country’s 17th Ebola outbreak.
• 15 May 2026 — Uganda’s Ministry of Health confirms a Bundibugyo virus case in an elderly man admitted to a Kampala private hospital on 11 May; he died on 14 May. His body was returned to DRC the same day.
• 16 May 2026 — A second imported case is confirmed in Kampala. The WHO Director-General, following IHR consultation, declares Ebola in DRC and Uganda a PHEIC.
• 18 May 2026 — The US CDC, DHS, and federal partners implement enhanced traveller screening and entry restrictions.
• 29 May 2026 — Case totals climb to 125 confirmed and 906 suspected cases, with 223 suspected deaths; the Africa CDC reports more than 1,000 suspected cases in DRC alone, and WHO’s Director-General travels to the outbreak epicentre.
• 2 June 2026 — Confirmed cases reach 378 (363 in DRC, 15 in Uganda) with 63 confirmed deaths as transmission accelerates across Ituri.
• 17 June 2026 — The outbreak reaches 856 confirmed cases and 198 confirmed deaths; Ituri Province accounts for 767 cases, with spread into North Kivu and South Kivu.
• 24 June 2026: France confirms an imported Ebola case, the outbreak’s second to reach Europe after the May evacuation to Germany.
• 27 June 2026: Cumulative totals pass 1,294 confirmed cases and 362 confirmed deaths across DRC and Uganda, then the third-largest Ebola outbreak on record; Ituri Province remains the epicentre (about 1,165 cases).
• 26 July 2026: Cumulative totals reach about 3,221 confirmed cases and 1,407 deaths (case-fatality ~44%). WHO says the outbreak is still expanding, with suspected cases in previously unaffected provinces, and the US CDC confirms an American citizen in the DRC has tested positive.
• 31 July 2026: Congolese officials report 3,532 confirmed cases and 1,556 deaths across five provinces, and the outbreak overtakes DRC’s 2018–2020 epidemic (about 3,470 cases) to become the world’s second-largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded, behind only the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic. The Africa CDC calls it the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreak on record; the WFP’s acting chief says “the world needs to pay much more attention.”
• 28 July 2026: Uganda’s Ministry of Health declares the country’s Ebola outbreak over, 42 days after the last patient was discharged on 16 June. Uganda recorded 20 confirmed cases, 18 recoveries and 2 deaths; 15 cases were imported from DR Congo and 5 were Ugandan health workers infected while treating patients.
• 30 July 2026: WHO Disease Outbreak News reports 3,626 confirmed cases and 1,589 deaths across DR Congo, Uganda and France, and confirms this is now the largest Ebola outbreak ever recorded in DR Congo, past the 2018–2020 epidemic’s 3,317 confirmed cases. The outbreak covers 49 health zones in five provinces; week 30 was the worst yet at 567 cases and 296 deaths. Health-worker infections reach 151, with 44 deaths.
• 2 August 2026: The WHO warns the epidemic is intensifying at an “exceptional” pace and calls for a major scale-up of the response, citing insecurity, displacement and cross-border movement.
• 4–5 August 2026: WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Africa CDC’s Jean Kaseya and WHO Africa’s Mohamed Janabi lead a joint mission to Uganda, Bunia and Kinshasa. As of 4 August DR Congo has 3,973 confirmed cases, 1,801 deaths and 776 recoveries across 51 health zones; contact follow-up is at 75% against a 95% target, and the North Kivu treatment centre is at 139% occupancy.
• 5 August 2026: President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi orders a six-month, village-centred response plan with free healthcare in Ituri and North Kivu. The United States announces $242 million, taking mobilised international funding past $420 million.
• 7 August 2026: DR Congo passes 4,000 confirmed cases, reaching 4,053 cases and 1,850 deaths as of 5 August across 53 health zones, with Gombari (Haut-Uélé) and Bafwasende (Tshopo) newly affected. The WHO’s vaccine advisory group recommends putting Ervebo into a Phase 3 trial against Bundibugyo virus, supplied from Gavi’s 500,000-dose stockpile.
• 9 August 2026: The confirmed death toll passes 2,000, 86 days after the outbreak was declared. Epidemiological week 32, to 9 August, becomes the worst yet with 579 confirmed cases and 304 deaths.
• 12 August 2026: WHO says it is on the verge of submitting the Ervebo Phase 3 trial protocol to DRC regulatory and ethics committees. Contacts of confirmed cases will be randomised individually to vaccine or placebo rather than vaccinated in rings. The PARTNERS therapeutics trial has enrolled more than 100 confirmed cases across three treatment facilities in Ituri.
• 13 August 2026: Bas-Uélé becomes the sixth affected province after a case imported from Haut-Uélé is identified in Buta and dies. The outbreak now spans 54 health zones.
• 14 August 2026: WHO Disease Outbreak News 2026-DON615 reports 4,665 confirmed cases and 2,184 deaths in DR Congo as of 12 August, a case-fatality rate of 46.8%, with 965 recoveries, 634 patients hospitalised in isolation and contact follow-up at 84.2%. Ituri accounts for 85% of confirmed cases and health-worker infections reach 155, with 45 deaths.

The Response: A Village-Centred Reset

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Africa CDC’s Jean Kaseya and WHO Africa’s Mohamed Janabi ran a joint high-level mission to Uganda, Bunia and Kinshasa on 4 and 5 August, drawing on Uganda’s containment experience. Their call afterwards was for an urgent, community-led scale-up.

The operational numbers behind that call are stark. Contact follow-up was running at 75% against a 95% target, 674 people were under care, and the treatment centre in North Kivu was at 139% occupancy.

Ten days on, some of that has moved. Contact follow-up reached 84.2% by 14 August and 634 patients were hospitalised in isolation. The case curve has not turned: the week to 9 August was the worst of the outbreak so far.

On 5 August President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi convened a crisis meeting and ordered a six-month, village-centred plan: communities co-leading alerts, free healthcare across Ituri and North Kivu, timely salaries and risk allowances for health workers, and one response plan on one budget.

Money has followed. Partners have mobilised more than $420 million, including $242 million announced by the United States on 5 August. The International Medical Corps opened the country’s largest treatment facility, 100 beds, in early August, taking capacity to roughly 900 beds across the five provinces.

MSF is blunter about the gap. It says the disease is still spreading at an alarming and unprecedented rate, and that 90% of patients arriving at treatment centres had never been on a contact list.

Where the Outbreak Started — and Why It Spread

The current epicentre is Mongbwalu Health Zone in Ituri Province, a high-traffic mining area in eastern DRC. WHO’s epidemiologists believe most early cases originated there, then migrated to Rwampara and Bunia health zones in search of medical care — bringing the virus into population centres with imperfect infection control.

Three features make Ituri a particularly high-risk launch point for regional spread:

• Mining and commercial traffic — Mongbwalu is a regional gold-mining hub with extensive informal labour movement.
• Cross-border proximity — Ituri shares borders with Uganda and South Sudan; Bunia HZ is less than 500 km from the Ugandan border. Two imported Uganda cases in less than a week confirm this concern.
• Insecurity — Active armed groups in parts of Ituri have limited the rapid-response team’s ability to identify and follow up contacts. As of 15 May, 65 contacts had been listed, 15 high-risk, but several had become symptomatic and died before they could be isolated.

The Outbreak Spreads Beyond DRC

The outbreak has crossed borders three times so far, all through the movement of patients and aid workers rather than local transmission abroad. Uganda’s own chain of cases has now been closed out, and the ECDC rates the risk to people living in the EU or EEA as very low.

• 🇺🇬 Uganda: outbreak declared over on 28 July 2026. Uganda recorded 20 confirmed cases, 18 recoveries and 2 deaths. Fifteen cases were imported from DR Congo and five were Ugandan health workers infected while caring for patients. The Ministry of Health declared the country Ebola-free 42 days after the last patient was discharged on 16 June, crediting rapid laboratory testing, genome sequencing and digital contact tracing.
• 🇩🇪 Germany — 1 evacuated American case at Berlin’s Charité. Peter Stafford, a US missionary doctor who has worked at Nyankunde Hospital in eastern DRC since 2019, contracted Bundibugyo virus while treating Ebola patients. He was airlifted to Berlin-Brandenburg airport on 19 May 2026 and transferred under police convoy to Charité’s specialised isolation ward (the same unit that treated patients during the 2014–2016 West Africa outbreak). Six high-risk contacts will be monitored in Germany and the Czech Republic. This is the first known Ebola medical evacuation to Europe in the current outbreak. A second US citizen, a humanitarian worker in DR Congo, tested positive on 10 July and was medically evacuated to Germany on 13 July 2026, bringing the number of patients treated in Germany to two.
• 🇺🇸 United States — enhanced screening, no cases. CDC, DHS, and partner agencies implemented Title-42-style entry restrictions on 18 May for travellers from DRC and Uganda. Departure-airport screening, on-arrival temperature checks, and 21-day post-arrival monitoring are now standard for entries from the affected region. No US-soil cases have been reported.

The American patient’s evacuation puts a fact often missed in headlines into sharp relief: Ebola containment depends as much on the global health workforce as on local capacity. Stafford was one of the international clinicians sustaining frontline care at Nyankunde Hospital — the same kind of role that, during the 2014–2016 West Africa outbreak, saw infections among foreign medical workers in MSF, the US Public Health Service, and Spanish and Italian missionary hospitals. The Charité has handled four previous Ebola patient evacuations across the 2014–2016 and 2018–2020 outbreaks; the unit’s protocols are well-established, and the patient prognosis (the Bundibugyo strain’s case-fatality is roughly 30–40%, lower than Zaire ebolavirus) is comparatively favourable with intensive supportive care.

WHO’s Director-General used the word “serious concern” on 19 May to describe the trajectory. WHO’s DRC representative told reporters there is “significant uncertainty” about how far the virus has actually spread — contact tracing in Ituri is being run under conditions of active insecurity and intermittent road closures, and several listed contacts have died before they could be isolated, suggesting transmission chains are longer than the confirmed case count implies.

What Bundibugyo Virus Is

Ebola is not a single virus. The genus Orthoebolavirus contains six recognised species, of which four are known to cause disease in humans. The most-studied — and the target of all licensed vaccines — is Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV), which causes the highest case-fatality rates (up to 90% untreated) and has driven the largest outbreaks, including the 2014–2016 West Africa epidemic and the 2018–2020 DRC outbreak.

The current outbreak is Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), the rarest of the four human-pathogenic species. Discovered in 2007 during an outbreak in western Uganda’s Bundibugyo District, it has caused only two prior outbreaks — Bundibugyo District 2007 (149 cases) and Isiro Health Zone, DRC, 2012 (52 cases). Case-fatality is around 30–40%, lower than Zaire ebolavirus but still extremely high.

Critically, the two licensed Ebola vaccines — Ervebo (rVSV-ZEBOV) and the Mvabea/Zabdeno two-dose regimen — both target Zaire ebolavirus. Cross-protection against Bundibugyo virus has not been clinically established. The two monoclonal antibody treatments (Inmazeb and Ebanga) also target Zaire-specific epitopes. Standard Ebola medical countermeasures may not work against this strain; the response is relying on classic outbreak containment (case isolation, contact tracing, safe burials) rather than vaccination.

Ervebo Heads Into a Phase 3 Trial

That may be about to change. On 7 August 2026 the WHO’s technical advisory group on candidate vaccine prioritisation recommended that Ervebo be prioritised for a Phase 3 trial during this outbreak, a shift from the earlier assessment that Zaire-strain vaccines had no established role here.

The evidence is thin but real: across animal studies, three of four non-human primates vaccinated with Ervebo survived a Bundibugyo challenge, against one of four unvaccinated controls. Gavi’s global stockpile holds 500,000 doses, some already pre-positioned in DR Congo.

Roughly 55,000 frontline workers in Ituri and North Kivu had already received Ervebo in earlier preventive campaigns against Zaire ebolavirus. Separately, a Bundibugyo-specific candidate entered Phase 1 testing in the UK on 24 July, with a second trial starting in Canada.

On 12 August the WHO said it was on the verge of submitting the trial protocol to DRC regulatory and ethics committees. The design randomises individual contacts of confirmed cases to Ervebo or placebo, which the WHO considers more efficient than the ring vaccination used in past outbreaks.

Timing depends on protocol approval, shipping doses to Ituri and training trial teams. The WHO has said the trial could start about six weeks after the 7 August recommendation, and Tedros has been blunt that nobody yet knows whether Ervebo works against Bundibugyo virus in humans.

Therapeutics are further along. The PARTNERS trial, running at three treatment facilities in Ituri, has enrolled more than 100 confirmed cases.

Ebola Cases Worldwide Since 1976

Since Ebola was first identified in 1976 in what is now the DRC, roughly 35,000 cases have been recorded across 19 countries — but the distribution is extremely skewed. The 2014–2016 West Africa outbreak alone accounts for about 80% of the cumulative case total, with three countries (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea) carrying most of it.

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