Ebola in Congo surpasses four thousand cases, West Nile in six European countries

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has updated, as of 8 August 2026, the toll of the Ebola epidemic caused by the Bundibugyo virus currently underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo: 4,209 confirmed cases, including 1,916 related deaths, with 595 patients currently hospitalised in isolation. The World Health Organization had declared the epidemic a public health emergency of international concern on 17 May 2026. On 13 July 2026, a patient was medically evacuated to Germany, the first case imported into European territory since the epidemic began.

At the same time, the ECDC’s seasonal surveillance shows that West Nile virus transmission is ongoing in Europe, with 81 locally acquired human cases recorded in six countries on the continent. The available excerpts do not specify which six countries are involved, nor the distribution of cases among them.

Both pieces of information come from a single institutional source, the ECDC, which, as Europe’s epidemiological surveillance body, constitutes a primary source for this type of data; no further independent confirmations appear in the excerpts collected, nor are there updates subsequent to 8 August regarding the Ebola epidemic.

The two health situations differ greatly in severity and spread — an epidemic with over four thousand confirmed cases and nearly two thousand deaths on one hand, a seasonal transmission with more limited numbers on the other — but they share the same surveillance body and the same continental alert mechanism. The medical evacuation case in Germany remains, to date, the only instance of the Ebola epidemic being imported into Europe reported in the available excerpts, while West Nile circulation remains, by definition, a seasonal phenomenon that the ECDC monitors through its ongoing surveillance network.