Ebola in Congo: WHO announces surpassing of 6,000 reported cases
In the briefing to Member States on September 1st, the WHO director-general spoke of over 6,000 cases and nearly 3,000 deaths across sixty health zones. The ECDC update counts 6,100 confirmed cases as of August 30th. In Uganda the outbreak has been closed since August 26th.
The Health section this morning remained uncovered because the figures on the Congolese outbreak had not passed verification. By the afternoon the story stands on two distinct institutional sources, and the first is the minutes of a meeting: on September 1st, in Geneva, in a high-level briefing addressed to Member States, the director-general of the World Health Organization announced that the threshold of 6,000 reported cases had been surpassed in the Bundibugyo virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“Today we have surpassed 6,000 reported cases, with nearly 3,000 deaths.” (transl. from English) — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general
The text of the address specifies the extent: sixty health zones across six provinces. WHO describes the outbreak as the second largest ever recorded and the fastest-spreading. On May 17th, 2026, the organization had declared the Bundibugyo outbreak in Congo and Uganda a public health emergency of international concern; in June, together with OCHA, it appointed Julien Harneis to coordinate the response.
Two counts that should not be added together
The second count comes from the ECDC epidemiological update of September 1st, built on data from the Congolese Ministry of Health: on August 31st Kinshasa reported 6,100 confirmed cases and 2,950 deaths, with data updated to August 30th, and 814 patients hospitalized in isolation. Compared with the previous report, there are 59 new confirmed cases and 39 new deaths.
The two figures are not the same thing and should not be averaged: WHO refers to cases reported as of the briefing date, ECDC to laboratory-confirmed cases dated two days earlier. The gap between “reported” and “confirmed” explains why a higher number can appear in the document covering the longer period, and why it would be incorrect to read the shift as a downward revision.
| Source | Data date | Cases | Deaths |
|---|---|---|---|
| WHO, Member States briefing | September 1st (reported) | over 6,000 | nearly 3,000 |
| ECDC based on Congolese ministry data | August 30th (confirmed) | 6,100 | 2,950 |
The territorial distribution is highly uneven. The new confirmed cases come from Ituri (44), North Kivu (8), Haut Uele (6) and Bas Uele (1). Ituri province remains by far the most affected: 5,016 cases and 2,274 deaths, across 28 of its 36 health zones.
Vaccines and therapies: trials, not availability
WHO states that three vaccines and three therapies against the Bundibugyo virus are in clinical trials, and attributes the progress of the studies to the work of its own R&D Blueprint for Epidemics.
This information must be read for what it is, and its limits must be stated before any further consideration. The source is not a peer-reviewed scientific publication, but an institutional statement that merely notes the existence of six trials: it does not indicate what phase each is in, does not report the size of the enrolled samples, does not describe the methodology — whether and which studies are controlled, randomized or open-label — and publishes no results, not even interim ones. No efficacy data is therefore available, nor any element allowing one to distinguish an observed association from a causal relationship. No conflicts of interest of those conducting or funding the trials are disclosed in the records available to us. These are ongoing studies, not available products: any reading that presents them as existing cures is not supported by the sources. This is precisely the core of the response challenge: existing treatments were certified for a different strain from the one currently circulating.
The same problem affects diagnostics. On May 22nd, 2026, Africa CDC recommended the use of real-time PCR to identify the Bundibugyo strain, because no rapid antigen test met WHO specifications. On the ground, Médecins Sans Frontières states that over 1,400 workers are deployed in the response in Congo: this is the organization’s own position, published on its website, and not a figure verified by third parties.
One chapter has closed. On August 26th WHO declared the outbreak in Uganda over after 42 days without new confirmed cases: a total of 20 confirmed cases and two deaths, with the last confirmed case on June 21st. Uganda’s Ministry of Health had anticipated the declaration on July 28th. On this point we have only one source, the ECDC update, which draws on WHO and the Ugandan ministry.
What we don’t know
Beyond the limits already noted regarding the six trials, we do not have a fatality rate calculated using the same case perimeter, and the two available accounts stop at August 30th and September 1st respectively. The next verifiable element will be the subsequent update from the Congolese ministry as relayed by ECDC.
← Archive · Front page · Past editorials · Report an error · Original article (in Italian)