JONATHAN M. METSCH, Dr.P.H. – Tracking Emerging Public Health Challenges – May 30, 2026 – Ebola
Giant trucks, curling through lush hills, leave blinding clouds of dust. Edgy-looking Congolese soldiers guard checkpoints that are often little more than string. Gold miners and people fleeing rebel conflict stream in and out of Mongbwalu, providing an excellent vector for the spread of the virus.
Through April and into early May, doctors in Mongbwalu found themselves fighting a mysterious disease that was taking dozens of lives in the town. It turned out to be Bundibugyo, a virus that causes Ebola. There is no approved vaccine or treatment.
As of Thursday, at least 1,077 suspected cases and 246 suspected deaths had been recorded in this outbreak, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 400 of those cases are in Mongbwalu, a town in the heart of gold country and surrounded by rebel-held territory here in Ituri Province, in northeastern Congo.
Ebola has swamped this hospital’s meager capacities.” (1)
“Congolese authorities say the number of confirmed cases in DRC reached 225 on Friday, nearly double the figure of 121 reported two days earlier.
The outbreak is caused by the Bundibugyo virus, a rare and severe form of Ebola for which there is no approved vaccine or treatment.
The WHO has declared the outbreak a global health emergency, its highest level of alarm, and the medical NGO Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, calls it one of the fastest-spreading Ebola outbreaks ever recorded.
Authorities have also recorded 1,028 suspected cases and more than 220 suspected deaths in DRC, while the disease has crossed into neighbouring Uganda, which has recorded nine confirmed cases and one death.” (2)
Ebola spread in DR Congo ‘deeply alarming’, MSF warns, by Emery Makumeno, and Jaroslav Lukiv, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99ldxykz4zo
“Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). warned Friday that the current Ebola outbreak could become the second-largest spread of this virus in history.
“It’s already the third-largest outbreak of Ebola in the world,” Redfield told NewsNation, The Hill’s broadcast partner.
Redfield referenced the largest-ever Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which spanned from 2014 to 2016 and involved 28,600 cases and 11,308 deaths, according to the health agency. The former CDC chief oversaw the second-largest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), in which the administration said 2,287 people died out of 3,470 reported cases between 2018 and 2020.
“This is something that is likely to go on unfortunately for a while,” he told NewsNation’s Elizabeth Vargas. “And these numbers, I won’t be surprised if this doesn’t become the second-largest outbreak that we’ve ever had.”” (3)
“It’s been less than two weeks since the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. In that short time, mistrust between communities and health providers has been evident.
While Rukengeza was shocked by the attacks, he admits, he is not entirely surprised. This has happened during past Ebola outbreaks — and the tension is particularly evident around the death and burial of Ebola patients.
Dr. Micaela Serafini — president of Doctors Without Borders Switzerland — has worked on Ebola response efforts since 2007. She remembers vividly when, in 2019, an Ebola treatment center in the DRC that her organization ran was attacked.
“They believed that everyone that came in [to the clinic] was killed,” she says.
Since the death rate of Ebola patients was “extremely high,” people imagined that aid workers were murdering them.
She says this type of panic, fear and misinformation fuel the tension that emerges in the wake of a growing outbreak.” (4)
Kenya pushes ahead with Ebola quarantine facility in partnership with US despite court order, By Nimi Princewill, Larry Madowo, Lauren Kent, https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/29/africa/kenyan-court-ebola-facility-intl
“Donald Trump and the World Health Organization are teed up for another clash over infectious disease travel bans.
Trump ignored the WHO’s advice, and its criticism of travel restrictions, when he closed the U.S. border to foreigners who’d recently been in China at the outset of the Covid pandemic, and he’s ignoring the U.N. agency again now, at the outset of what is already one of the worst Ebola outbreaks ever, by barring most travelers from the affected countries.
Andrew Nixon, a health department spokesperson, described travel bans in a statement to POLITICO as a “longstanding public health tool” that will help the federal government reduce the risk of international spread while working to contain the outbreak at the source.
The WHO sees it quite differently. “Such measures are usually implemented out of fear and have no basis in science,” it said on May 17 in the same document that declared the outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo a “public health emergency of international concern.”
Though most countries are following the WHO’s advice, the U.S. is far from alone in ignoring it. More than a dozen other countries have also imposed travel restrictions, according to Jean Kaseya, the director general of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the public health agency of the African Union. The split underscores the difference between national leaders’ goals and those of the United Nations body whose aim is to prevent epidemics from becoming pandemics.” (5)
“At least two North Texas counties are monitoring travelers who have returned from Ebola‑impacted countries to ensure they are not developing symptoms of the virus.
Tarrant County Public Health and Denton County Public Health said they are working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Texas Department of State Health Services to check on people arriving from three African nations: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and South Sudan.
“After arrival in Tarrant County, Tarrant County Public Health contacts these individuals to provide education about symptoms to watch for and establishes the appropriate level of symptom monitoring for 21 days after the traveler leaves the affected area,” the county said in a news release. “No symptoms have been reported by those under monitoring.”
Denton County officials said the residents they are tracking are self‑monitoring.
“Quarantine and isolation are not applied to travelers at this time when there are no known exposures to a case,” spokesperson Jenica Bates said.
Neither county told us how many people they’re monitoring.” (6)
1.Inside the Ebola Epicenter, the Virus Rages With Little to Stop It, By Declan Walsh, https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/world/africa/ebola-epicenter-congo.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
2.Confirmed Ebola cases nearly double in days as WHO chief visits DR Congo, By Faisal Ali, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/5/30/confirmed-ebola-cases-nearly-double-in-days-as-who-chief-visits-dr-congo#:~:text=Confirmed%20Ebola%20cases,Ali%20and%20Reuters
3.Ex-CDC director warns Ebola outbreak could rank second largest in history, by Sarah Davis, https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5902349-robert-redfield-cdc-ebola-outbreak-history/
4.Why are people attacking Ebola clinics? It revolves around trust, death and body bags, by Gabrielle Emanuel, https://www.npr.org/2026/05/29/g-s1-124359/ebola-outbreak-trust-death-burial-democratic-republic-congo
5.Ebola response puts Trump on collision course with global health body, By Sophie Gardner and Carmen Paun, https://www.politico.com/news/2026/05/30/ebola-travel-bans-conflict-over-outbreak-response-00943557
6.Two North Texas counties monitoring travelers for Ebola symptoms, By Giles Hudson, https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/two-north-texas-counties-monitoring-travelers-ebola-symptoms/
curated by Jonathan M. Metsch, Dr.P.H.
Clinical Professor of Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai