Cart
0
A New Ebola Strain Is Spreading in Congo. There Is No Vaccine for It.
A new outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola in the DRC's Ituri province has killed at least 87 people across hundreds of suspected cases, crossed into Uganda and triggered a global health emergency declaration from the WHO. All with no approved vaccine to fight it.
A rapid response team in the Democratic Republic of Congo conducts exercises to prepare for exposure to Ebola in 2019. The country is experiencing new outbreak of the virus this year. (Photo by Tania Seburyamo for the World Health Organization)
Two weeks ago people were dying in the villages of Ituri province. Nobody officially knew why.
By the time health officials confirmed what was happening on May 15, 87 people were already dead.
Gear Spotlight- What Our Readers Are Picking Up
The Democratic Republic of Congo is dealing with its 17th Ebola outbreak since the virus was first identified there in 1976. But this one is different from every outbreak that came before it in one critical way.
The strain driving it is called Bundibugyo. There is no approved vaccine. There is no specific treatment. DRC Health Minister Samuel-Roger Kamba warned it has a very high lethality rate that can reach 50%.
Every tool developed to fight Ebola over the past decade was built for a different enemy.
The widely used Ervebo vaccine and existing Ebola treatments were specifically developed to target the Zaire strain. They offer little or no protection against Bundibugyo. This leaves health workers and communities in affected areas without a vaccine shield.
And the virus is not staying in one place.
On May 14, a 59-year-old Congolese man died of the Bundibugyo strain in Kampala, Uganda's capital, confirming the first international spread of this outbreak. The man travelled by public transport from the DRC to Uganda while symptomatic, potentially exposing multiple people along the way. His body was then transported back across the border to the DRC for burial.
A sick man on public transport. A body crossing an international border. Two potential transmission events in a single case.
The WHO declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stressed it does not meet the criteria of a pandemic emergency and advised countries against closing their borders.
That distinction matters. But it is doing a lot of work right now.
If you have followed this far, here is what makes this outbreak harder to contain than most.
A local civil society representative reached by phone said people had been dying for the past two weeks before officials confirmed the outbreak. He said there is nowhere to isolate the sick.
Africa CDC Director General Dr. Jean Kaseya said he did not know what type of protective gear those who came into contact with the Ugandan case had been using. He added that his region has no manufacturing capacity for personal protective equipment and that funds are urgently needed.
No vaccine. No PPE manufacturing. No isolation facilities. And a virus that was already spreading for two weeks before anyone officially said so.
Dr. Craig Spencer, a professor at Brown University's School of Public Health who contracted the Zaire strain of Ebola in 2014, wrote that the outbreak is already large even though health officials have only recently recognized it. "This means we're just learning about this outbreak long after it's already been spreading," he said.
The DRC's world-renowned virologist Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, who co-discovered Ebola in 1976, noted that all but one of Congo's 16 previous outbreaks involved the Zaire strain. The identification of the Bundibugyo strain is a significant complication.
There is one potential tool in development. Researchers have an experimental vaccine candidate that has been tested on monkeys with an efficacy rate of around 50%. Its potential in human patients has not yet been assessed.
Half-tested. On monkeys. That is what stands between this strain and a vaccine.
Doctors Without Borders said it was preparing a large-scale response and called the rapid spread extremely concerning. The WHO released $500,000 from its emergency fund to support surveillance, contact tracing and clinical care.
Officials warned of a high risk of continued spread due to significant cross-border population movement in the region affecting the DRC, Uganda and South Sudan.
The last major Ebola outbreak in the DRC, between 2018 and 2020, killed nearly 2,300 people. That one had a vaccine.
This one does not.
The WHO is calling it an emergency. The borders remain open. The experimental vaccine has never been tested on a human being. And somewhere in Ituri province, the outbreak that started in late April is still spreading.
The world is only just now paying attention.
Editor's Note: The Ebola Bundibugyo outbreak in the DRC represents one of the most serious emerging health threats of 2026. The absence of an approved vaccine, combined with cross-border spread and limited containment infrastructure, makes this a situation that demands urgent global attention well before it demands the word pandemic.
